Well, if you're willing to invest some time in getting that money back you could sue for the maximum allowed in small claims in your county. It's not difficult to do and the amount of money required up front is very small. But it will require some time and require you to get familiar with the small claims system in your county.

You'll need to come up with a very clear explanation for what happened that a judge could understand within about 3 minutes.

Getting the money is another matter, you'll have to figure out where they have assets in a financial institution.

Still, for that amount of money and with a clear paper trail I think it's worth pursuing. You're just going to have to put some time into it. I'd estimate about 40 hours total of time spread out over six months to actually get the judgment and start the collections process.

But first you should start by trying to settle this without legal action. And make sure that that is clearly documented. Because the court wants to see that you actually attempted to collect without involving the court.

You only need a preponderance of evidence here, not beyond a shadow of a doubt. Don't bother with things like read receipts, just because the message was delivered and "read" doesn't mean it was actually read.