Short answer. No. Article 34 makes it a prohibited practice to make a worker pay any amount greater than that actually received by him as a loan or advance. The measure is the cash that reached your hands, not the figure written on the paper you were asked to sign.
What the law says
or to make a worker pay any amount greater than that actually received by him as a loan or advance
Labor Code, Article 34 — Prohibited Recruitment Practices. Read the full provision →
The law measures what you received
The words actually received by him are the whole rule. A recruiter who hands over twenty thousand pesos after deducting a service charge, then requires repayment of twenty-five thousand, has made the worker pay more than was received twice over — once in the deduction and once in the mark-up. Interest, processing charges and "handling" added on top of an advance all run into the same clause. This is why the amount on the acknowledgment you signed is not the starting point; the cash or transfer that actually arrived is.
Salary deductions are still repayment
The clause does not require that you hand money back at a counter. Where an advance is recovered by deductions from wages, each deduction is part of the repayment, and the test is what they add up to against what you received. Deductions are easy to lose track of precisely because they are automatic and appear on a payslip you may never have been given. Ask for the full payslip history and total the deductions yourself; a running total is often the first time the size of the excess becomes visible.
Why recruiters use advances at all
An advance converts a fee the worker cannot pay into a debt the worker cannot escape. It is a familiar structure: a placement is offered on credit, the worker leaves with a balance owing, and the debt then does the work of keeping him in a job he would otherwise leave. Placing the mark-up on an advance under the same prohibition as overcharging is what stops the fee rules being sidestepped by lending. If the debt is what is holding you where you are, that is the part worth advice on first.
What settles it
Two figures decide this question, so document both. What you received: the deposit, transfer or handover, with its date, and any message in which the recruiter states the amount. What you have repaid: every deduction, every cash payment, every remittance, totalled to date. Keep the signed acknowledgment as well, even though it overstates the loan, because the gap between what it says and what arrived is itself the point. Bring those two totals to whoever advises you rather than a description of the arrangement.