Hi jackson, 
Hope you are doing great, as per my research changing the url wont remove the backlink pointing to the older Url. in worst case by changing the url might harm you sites ranking and traffic as well. according to google Ref: "https://www.searchenginejournal.com/changing-url-structure/325249/#close" 
“The bigger effect will be from changing a lot of URLs (all pages in those folders) – that always takes time to be reprocessed. I’d avoid changing URLs unless you have a really good reason to do so, and you’re sure that they’ll remain like that in the long run.” So, to change the url is not a good option for now, you can follow disawo as you mention earlier. i have face the same issue but now spam link get removed from one of my project. related to hat and caps named Buy4store.

Hi jackson, 
Hope you are doing great, as per my research changing the url wont remove the backlink pointing to the older Url. in worst case by changing the url might harm you sites ranking and traffic as well. according to google Ref: "https://www.searchenginejournal.com/changing-url-structure/325249/#close" 
“The bigger effect will be from changing a lot of URLs (all pages in those folders) – that always takes time to be reprocessed. I’d avoid changing URLs unless you have a really good reason to do so, and you’re sure that they’ll remain like that in the long run.” So, to change the url is not a good option for now, you can follow disawo as you mention earlier. i have face the same issue but now spam link get removed from one of my project. related to hat and caps named Buy4store.