If so, what is the problem about asking Robin to simply pay again?
And the situation is trivial: no platform would survive if they allowed freelancers keep the money earned by carding, because it would be flooded with carders.
Full disclosure: i made over $2M on Upwork.
Upwork takes a 30% cut (or lower, depending on your income on the platform), they are taking this cut, to create a safe and trust-able environment for its users by verifying both clients and freelancers. Considering this incident is a lapse on their end, the penalty should be paid solely by them.
If doing so means they will go bankrupt, it just shows they failed as a company to create a safe enough platform to justify taking that 30% cut.
But yes, the ultimate solution is getting "Robin" to pay. Upwork which owns the client relationship and has the resources to pursue fraudsters should be leading on that though.
The collary is true too though. No freelancer could survive if they don't receive money from carding, because they still worked for these hours and deserve to be paid. And since it is Upwork, not the freelancer, doing the payment processing. It is them who should be held responsible as the freelancer don't even get access to the card information so the could check for fraudulence themselves
I interpret the rules as "commission is 5% plus $550 per client", which makes it sound a lot lower. How much does it cost to get 1 client "from the internet"? I know the answer and it's not pretty at all.
And yes i'm on the platform for precisely 13 years, but bulk of money comes from fixed price contracts anyway, and effective rates there are ca. $300 an hour. Most of money was made in the last 2 years anyway.