Cheers Micheal..
Common sense really... (having been involved with this place for so long)..
The biggest problem of trying to help decent ,honest people from the UK with no experience of the Philippines in situations like this is trying to persuade them of how corrupt its officials and so called professionals can be and how little empathy they possess in these stressful/life changing situations unless there is a pile of cash via money gram or western union etc ready to arrive.
When things get messy,they can get potentially very expensive here.. It really is time to take stock and for him to accept advice from our guys here on Filipino UK.. Hopefully,thats what will happen in this case.
Fred.