Contractor Fraud Help

Looking to get some guidence on next steps and if filing criminal charges is appropriate in this situation:

Hired an individual contractor, signed a contract with the person, paid 50% deposit, the contractor never showed up to start the project. It's been 2 weeks since the project start date as it appears on the contract. All attempts of contacting the contractor have gone unanswered in the past 2 weeks.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation and what did you do?

I posted on r/legaladvice but didn't get any traction there. So I'm not necessarily looking for legal advice from this subreddit more so if anyone has been in a similar situation.