u/Broad-Motor2277

I’m looking for advice and a sanity check on how to handle an escalating situation with a former freelance client. A few months ago, I worked as a freelance designer for a client. We never had a formal written contract; it started as small individual projects and moved into an informal retainer. She was verbally abusive and extremely difficult to work with, so I resigned.

Upon resigning, I provided links to her project files on my personal cloud drive with a 30-day window to download them. Since I pay for my own cloud storage, I cleared the files off my drive once the window passed. I was also listed as an admin on her website builder, so I removed myself as a contributor. She later forgot her login credentials and began accusing me of "stealing" her website.

The client failed to download her files during the notice period and began texting, calling, and insulting me non-stop. She sent me my home address, threatened to send people to beat me up, used slurs and obscenities, and treated me terribly because I chose not to engage. Without a contract, I fulfilled my duties prior to resigning, and in my country, independent creators retain asset ownership without an explicit transfer contract.

When I maintained total radio silence, she escalated by emailing threats directly to my immigrant father at his place of work. Her husband, who works for a prominent corporate firm, was explicitly CC’d on the email sent to my father. Following this escalation, I reached out to his employer with screenshots documenting all of the harassment. His boss responded confirming that they take the matter seriously and assured me they instructed him to stop all contact with me and my family.

Despite this warning, in her latest email to my father, she makes threats that have no legal standing, lies about contacting my "past employers" (I don't even have a public resume or LinkedIn), and explicitly claims that her husband's corporate CEO personally advised them to pursue legal action against me.

I have not replied to any texts, calls, or emails from the client or her husband. I have saved all text logs, voice messages, cloud link receipts, and emails in a secure folder.

Because the husband was explicitly CC’d on the email harassing my father and their CEO's name was invoked, should I forward the email directly to the husband’s CEO/HR strictly as a neutral, non-demanding administrative update ("For your records... no response or action is required")?

Has anyone dealt with an ex-client harassing family members over their own administrative failure to download deliverables post-resignation?

Edit: I’m in Mexico, calling the policy will get me nowhere. The husband had called me 30+ times and also sent messages threatening me that’s why I reached out to his employer. The aggressors are Americans, I’m looking for alternatives to make the harassment stop.

TL;DR: Resigned from a toxic freelance client months ago after delivering all files via temporary cloud links. Without a contract, she failed to save them and is now making physical threats, accusing me of stealing her site, and emailing threats to my immigrant father at his workplace. Her husband (a corporate employee) was explicitly CC'd on the latest email to my father, which falsely claims their CEO advised legal action. Should I forward this to his CEO strictly as a non-demanding record update to protect myself since they are threatening to send people to my house? 

Worked as a freelance designer for a luxury company for a little over a year on a small monthly retainer. Over time, what started as design work turned into strategy, content creation, website development, CRM setup, social media planning, admin tasks, hiring support, finance-related work, and basically whatever else needed doing (founder is useless). Eventually I got burned out, felt like boundaries weren’t being respected, and decided to quit.

Before leaving, I spent months redesigning the company’s website. We went through six rounds of revisions. After the sixth round, I sent it back asking for any final feedback and got complete radio silence. After waiting, I launched it as-is and moved on because I had a million other things piling on my to do list.

Three weeks after I quit, the founder suddenly resurfaced saying the website wasn’t good enough, wasn’t up to standard, and needed a lot more work. I told them I was no longer on retainer, but I’d be happy to make additional changes as a paid project.

That didn’t go over well.

After a pretty nasty email exchange where they expected me to continue working on it for free, I removed myself from everything: Squarespace, Substack, ActiveCampaign, shared docs, all of it. I unsubscribed from every account and cleaned up anything connected to me personally.

While doing that, I realized there was a secondary website connected to the business (not the company’s main website) that had originally been created months ago under my Squarespace login. The domain registration and billing were under the founder’s name, but the account itself was tied to my login.

At that point I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the company anymore, so I transferred the account to a throwaway 10-minute email address, removed myself from ownership/admin access, and forgot about it.

Fast forward to now.

For the last week, the useless founder has been blowing up my phone demanding login credentials for this secondary website after months of completely forgetting its existence. I again no longer work for the company so have been ignoring messages, but now they’re giving me ultimatums saying that if I don’t provide the login details by a certain date they’ll “get others involved.”

The problem is I literally don’t have login details anymore. I removed myself from the account. The website is still live. The domain is registered in their name. The billing is in their name. As far as I can tell, this is something Squarespace support could probably sort out if they contacted them.

Instead, they seem convinced I’m hiding credentials from them.

ULPT question: what should I do, keep ignoring and see who this people they want to involve are or send them a scathing text about how dumb they are? They were perfectly happy burning a bridge with me over a small sum of money until they realized they still needed me because they don’t know anything about their business.