Ripped off by Web Developer

Has this ever happened to anyone?
I'm a fairly trusting person and should have checked this person out first before sending him my hard earned cash.
I had been in touch with this guy (I'll call him Mark) about creating some blogs for me and we were going to flip some on flippa and hopefully earn me some extra cash. I paid him $150 for several Wordpress sites and he was also going to train me how to do the same so I could create more. This all happened before I joined this Chris Farrell site (too bad)so anyway one day turned into two or three and then several and I didn't hear back from him. He finally responded saying he had been sick and would get the sites done. Then it was many more days that he didn't respond so I contacted Paypal and opened up a case against him. By the way he told me in our original phone conversation that I would be protected by Paypal and could receive a refund if I didn't like his service and or the products and that I could still have the sites. Then he said it would never come to this because he knew I'd be happy with everything. So after the case was opened he did in fact contact me within a couple days and told me how sorry he was and would get some of the sites up on Flippa that evening. It never happened and he has ignored all of my constant emails and voice mails ever since. He has totally ripped me off. After he contacted me and said my sites would be ready that evening like a large fool I went onto Paypal cancelled my case and said we were resolving the issue. I didn't know that once you do that you can't reopen the case. I'm just SOL. Be very careful out there.
Michael