Romance scammers in China are increasingly using Microsoft Teams to defraud victims, with some local law enforcement bureaus explicitly naming the workplace app as a tool used in fraudulent schemes. One Beijing woman, identified only as Zhao, told Wired she lost over $100,000 in May to a scammer posing as a Microsoft researcher. After meeting her on Xiaohongshu, the scammer moved the conversation to Teams, where he provided her with account credentials. Zhao said she trusted the app because it was developed by Microsoft, and she only realized the scheme when the scammer disappeared with her money, including funds from bank loans she took out to invest in a cryptocurrency project he promoted.
After Zhao shared her experience online, dozens of other victims contacted her, reporting losses ranging from $1,500 to $300,000. Only one person said they recovered money, by tracking down the recipient’s bank account. The victims described a consistent pattern: scammers instructed them to download Teams and log in using credentials supplied by the fraudsters. An analysis of 500 reviews of Teams on Apple’s Chinese app store over the past 18 months found that 30 percent included complaints about scammers, with the oldest dating back to 2022. One review from January said a scammer defrauded the reviewer of roughly $220,000, calling it a “pig-butchering” scam.
Microsoft stated that scammers routinely exploit trusted brands and platforms for social engineering, and that it investigates abuse reports and takes action against violating accounts. In June, the company began showing a general warning banner to Teams users in China about common scams and discontinued the personal version of Teams in the country, leaving only enterprise accounts. Zhao noted that when she was defrauded in May, Teams gave no warning, but when she reconnected with the same scammer in August, the app displayed a banner advising users not to share confidential information with strangers.
The scam extends beyond Teams to other corporate software. Wired’s analysis found that 71 percent of over 150 reviews of Cisco’s Webex on Apple’s Chinese app store referenced scams since February 2025. A Chinese software engineer in New York said he nearly fell for a scam this week that asked him to download Webex for a fake joint police investigation, but he hung up before transferring money. Zoho, which owns the communication app Cliq, said it identified a limited number of scammers using the platform and, as of August 27, disabled online payments to Cliq in China, suspended accounts linked to suspected scammers, and plans to discontinue Cliq’s free version in China.
Scammers recruit victims across multiple platforms, posing as job recruiters, renters, dates, or international buyers. They exploit Teams’ enterprise features by creating accounts for targets and controlling the organization, allowing them to deactivate accounts and erase chat histories that could serve as evidence. To justify the unusual setup, scammers claim work devices restrict certain apps or that they created a private account for the pair. When Zhao posed as a new victim to gather information, the scammer said his colleagues could see his WeChat messages, so Teams was “like our secret base together.” Teams remains an attractive tool for fraudsters because it is not blocked by the Chinese government, unlike Telegram or WhatsApp, and offers screen sharing and remote control features that can give scammers more access to victims’ devices.
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