Needing to deposit USD into Coinbase before I can receive USDT? Does this sound right?

I am owed a pretty huge debt, and the debtor's employee wants to pay me back in USDT. I don't do crypto, but in order to get the money returned to me, I opened a Coinbase account today. The debtor's employee said, "You have to deposit $1000 on USDT for activation to get a domain trading account capable of receiving mainnet transfer funds."

Um. What the heck does this mean? I thought I could just set up my account and receive the USDT. Thought this was going to be simple. Not sure this guy knows what he is talking about.