House for sale through joint agents

Do joint agents share information about bids?

I am interested in a house, and EA1 says there is currently a (cash) bid on the property. We called EA2 who says there is no current bid on the property.

Is this a rare case of being able to be sure that EA1 is inventing phantom bids, or is there a chance the EA2 is just uninformed?

Thanks in advance.

Bump?

Hard to know. I'd ring the one that says there is a cash bid on and ask when was that bid made. The other agent may be one who was employed some time ago, that EA may not have been in touch with the owners since. People sometimes get a new agent if they have not had much luck selling it, but keep the old agent just in case.
All you can do is decide how much you are prepared to pay for this house, then go in with a lower bid, allowing yourself some wiggle room to give yourself another few 'rounds' of bidding up to your walkaway point.
Do your research to see can you find out how long its been on the market, try daftdrop.com and collapso.net to see if the house has appeared on any price drop websites.