skins fan might refer to this show https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840196/ which is a British drama series
having worked with Brit, Irish, US, Oz & Kiwi entrepreneurs and also with companies in Europe I got stiffed on my invoices many times - it was a hard lesson.
If the founders first language is English you're a lot more likely to get stiffed on your work. I've learned to factor this risk into my quotes over the years.
On the other hand, the number of times I got stiffed by companies on the continent is close to nil. "Close" because the one time it did happen the CEO was a Brit. Not paying bills when you're in trouble isn't just an American thing. It is a problem with many companies when they're run by native English speakers (US, UK, CA, Australia, NZ).
But you can easily spot the bad apples with some experience: They will never agree on a 30% upfront of your fees. Not because they don't trust you with your work but because they expect to get stiffed the same way they stiff people.
The employer failed to make payroll for two straight pay cycles before deciding to layoff the entire engineering department. Impacted employees include my boss, my peer engineers and other W2s at the former company.
The CEO mentioned numerous times they would make payroll but continuously missed timelines before ultimately laying us off via Slack. We haven't received any formal termination/severance documents.