I got scammed.

This is a new one. My Filipino fiancée and I were trying to buy a Suzuki S-Presso. The sales manager told us to expect a call from 'the bank'. No call came, but instead we got a text from PNB saying our application was being processed. Okay, fine. Five days later I replied, and got no answer.

I called the linked number too. No one picked up.

We contacted the Suzuki sales manager and were told we weren't eligible because of our age. Then he said he'd resubmit to other banks and that a CI would come to verify where we live. A 'CI' is a credit investigator, who may be a bank employee or someone from an outside company. I don't know Tagalog or Cebuano, so I couldn't follow the conversation my fiancée had with the man who came to verify us. But there was no message or call from any bank, just some guy who knocked on our door and introduced himself as a CI working for East West Bank. Since I'm certain I won't be in the Philippines past February, I decided afterwards not to go ahead with the application. We called this 'CI' to let him know. No answer, just a busy signal. I messaged him three times. No reply. I called a few more times, but all I got was that annoying busy signal you hear when the phone hasn't been hung up properly.

Did I mention we gave him a cash deposit? He told us, or rather my fiancée, that he could speed things up if we paid the down payment before the loan was approved. We got a receipt, and he took a selfie holding the receipt and the cash. There's no bank name or business name on the receipt. My fiancée had taken a photo of his ID, but we had a data problem and reset her phone, assuming the photos were backed up. They weren't. As of writing this, East West has no employee by that name. On top of that, just as we were heading out to tell the dealership we were cancelling, a guy shows up on a motorcycle in a T-shirt, says he's a CI, and wants to talk to my fiancée's niece, who had already lost interest in her own loan application. We're pretty sure our deposit is paying for a nice weekend for these two. I suspect the sales manager, someone at the dealership, or the bank may be in on it. How else could anyone have seen our car loan application? We're posting this so everyone knows this happens.