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VERA FILES FACT CHECK: FAKE house and lot raffle by ‘Pag-IBIG’ goes viral

An impostor Facebook page of Pag-IBIG Fund, the government’s affordable shelter financing agency, is posting fake house-and-lot raffles on social media.

The fake page “Pag-ibig housing loan,” created on Feb. 16, posted on Feb. 19 a photo of a family of three standing in front of a new house — supposedly the “first winners” of its contest.

It wrote as its caption:

DAHIL SA PAG LAGO NG AMING AHENSYA MAMIMIGAY KAMI NG HOUSE & LOT PARA MAKASALI SUNDIN LANG ANG MGA DAPAT GAWIN (Because of our agency’s growth, we will be giving away house & lot, to join, just follow the instructions)!”

It also invited netizens to like, share, and comment on the post to join the raffle. It now has over 18,000 likes, more than 28,000 comments, and has been shared over 27,000 times.

The Facebook post is fabricated. It uses an old SunStar Philippines photo of a family that actually won a P300,000-house-and-lot package from Pag-IBIG in August 2015. The family won in a contest for the participants of the agency’s annual mass wedding in Iligan City in February that year.

The fake Pag-ibig housing loan page has also published several photos of houses, tagging it as prizes for its fake raffles. Each of these posts’ shares range from 2,500 to 54,000.

Among these fake “prize” houses are a P35-million house previously on sale in Laguna province, a digital rendering of a villa by website amazingarchitecture.net, and a P16-million house for sale in Davao City.

Pag-IBIG Fund has already posted a warning on its official Facebook page regarding the scheme.

Pag-ibig housing loan page, which now has over 90,000 followers, was created two days after Pag-IBIG held on Feb. 14 its eighth annual mass wedding for member-couples.


(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)