Sadly this is one of the downsides of an art/money centered community. It's almost entirely impossible to hold artists accountable for these things, since they'll just call you a liar, or their fans will white knight in their defense. A lot of artists want to be treated like a professional business, but they never want to actually give a professional experience to a lot of people. Once they get the money, they can just drag things out by having a "queue" until your money clears any kind of buyer protection (PayPal), or they can use systems that don't have anything like that.

It's why when I commission art, I only do 25-50% up front, and the rest you will get one the piece is near completion. I'm tired of dealing with artists who want 100% of the payment up front and then just ghost me while being "busy" until I can no longer ask for a refund because I'm outside of the window for it.

Also careful about talking bad about artists on FA in a journal, last time I did it the admins forcefully removed my journal for "harassment" (even though I provided evidence of being scammed as well). This community is entirely too enabling of terrible artists siphoning money from people

I've worked with many artists, and this has been the only time that there has been this issue. Well, it happened once before with someone else but we settled on a middle ground. I've gotten art that I didn't necessarily like the result, but I got it at least. I don't want to have to change the way I pay just for this case

I changed the way I pay mostly as a protection to myself. Art transactions are a business, not a charity. I just think it's smart overall.

I am very sorry to hear that. That is a truly big fear that I had when first starting up asking for commissions. Because of that, I quickly found Artists and Clients and fell in love with that site and its safety. The artists there are also very nice as they probably think the same way Bunx does. They want to be trustworthy professionals but then there are some dark sheeps like the one you ran into.
I just hope that you can get over it quickly as, as you stated, you can't really do much about it.