Bear with me while I explain the circumstances behind the title of this thread.

I wanted to book a specific hotel - which was unavailable directly on the hotel's website, Booking.com, and Expedia. My first three go-to solutions.
A Kayak search revealed zero availability everywhere except Agoda.com had one last available room for sale, at a price that was about 50% higher than the listed price on the hotel's website for other dates.
Made the reservation on Agoda only to be told it was on request.
24 hours later my credit card was charged and I got an email confirmation from Agoda to say the booking was finalized and non refundable (as per the original terms and conditions on their site.)

Called the hotel. They had no reservation on record for me with them via Agoda but they had a reservation for one of the nights made by a company called (*undisclosed*).
They also gave me the email address + contact phone number of the person who made this booking (clearly made at a significantly lower price than I paid to Agoda.)
Called that travel agency - agency denied any knowledge of the booking + told me to call Agoda.

Clearly there is something nefarious going on. Before I start imagining what this might be... have other FTers had such an experience with Agoda in the past where confirmed bookings dont exist in the system?
Hotel is 100% sure that there is no booking on record under the confirmation code / name provided by Agoda.

What is Agoda's agenda? How do they work?

Note: yes I tried to reach Agoda and plenty of their phone numbers worldwide. Those phone numbers are non existent. I tried numbers in several countries just to be sure...
Their chat agent is not helpful - telling me they will get back to me in 48 hours.