Microsoft Teams Becomes Haven for Scammers in China

Microsoft Teams Becomes a Magnet for Scammers in China

Microsoft Teams has quietly become one of the most dangerous apps in China, and the victims are stacking up. Zhao, a woman in her 30s living in Beijing, lost over $100,000 in May to a romance scammer who posed as a Microsoft researcher. It started on Xiaohongshu. The scammer then moved the conversation to Teams, handing Zhao an account and password to log in with, and she didn't hesitate because she'd used the app before and trusted it, since Microsoft built it. So she typed in those credentials. "I didn't think much because I had used this app before. And since it was developed by Microsoft, I kind of trusted it," she says. But that trust cost her everything.

That trust was the trap. Once on Teams, the scammer talked about building a future together and pitched a cryptocurrency investment that, he claimed, would beat stock trading returns. Zhao got excited. She even took out loans from several banks to pour more money in. Then the scammer vanished with everything. Because she can no longer access the Teams account he set up for her, the chat logs are gone. Police have nothing to work with.

A Pattern That Keeps Repeating

Zhao started talking about her ordeal on social media. The responses flooded in. Dozens of other people across China reached out with nearly identical stories, and they reported losing anywhere from $1,500 to $300,000, a staggering range that shows how the scam scales with each victim's available savings. Only one victim recovered any funds, and that came from tracking down the recipient's bank account.

Local law enforcement has noticed. It's a big change. Some police bureaus in China have issued public warnings that name Teams as a scam tool, and one went as far as calling it a “fraud-related app,” which is a stark label for a product many use daily. But Maimai, a Chinese LinkedIn clone, told local media last year that it automatically warns users when messages contain high-risk keywords like “Teams” and “Skype,” so the red flags are everywhere now. That's telling.

App Store Reviews Tell the Story

The reviews on Apple’s Chinese app store are damning. An analysis of the past 18 months of Teams reviews found that 30 percent of the 500 reviewed included explicit complaints about scammers. The oldest scam-related review dates back to 2022. One review from January of this year reads: “The scammers had me register for this app so they could contact me, and they defrauded me of RMB 1.48 million [$220,000]. The police have opened a case.” It ends with a warning: “This was unquestionably a ‘pig-butchering’ scam. Beware of fraud,this was a bitter and costly lesson!”

“I didn’t think much because I had used this app before. And since it was developed by Microsoft, I kind of trusted it.”

Microsoft is aware of the problem. In a statement, Steven Masada, the global head of Microsoft’s digital crimes division, said the company “investigates reports of abuse, takes action against accounts that violate our policies, and continues to strengthen protections designed to identify and disrupt fraudulent activity.” In June, Microsoft began showing a warning banner to Teams users in China about common scams. It also discontinued the personal version of Teams in the country, making the service only available through enterprise accounts.

The Scammers’ Playbook

These fraudsters aren't picky about where they find targets. They'll pose as job recruiters, prospective renters, potential dates on Tinder, or international buyers sourcing products from Chinese factories, and the key move is always the same. Create a Teams account for the victim, then send them login credentials. Since the scammers control the organization, they can deactivate the account when the scheme is done, which wipes out any chat history that could serve as evidence. So it's clean.

Victims often get a cover story for why Teams is necessary. Scammers say they're on work devices that only allow certain apps, or they claim to have created a private Teams account just for the two of them, a cozy little fiction that makes the whole thing feel almost intimate. Some of the victims who contacted Zhao had dealt with the very same scammer she faced. One shared login credentials with her. So Zhao pretended to be a new potential victim to bait him into revealing how the ruse worked, then asked why he couldn't just use WeChat, China's dominant messaging app. His answer? His colleagues could see his WeChat messages because he was on a work project. Teams, he said, "is like our secret base together." The account he gave her, he told her, was "for team members to contact family while on the project." That's the trap. And it's a deep one.

Why Teams Works So Well for Fraud

Teams is an ideal vehicle for scammers in China for several reasons. It's not blocked by the government, unlike Telegram or WhatsApp. Scammers get real control. And the platform's screen sharing and remote control features give fraudsters far more command over victims' devices than they'd otherwise have, so they can move through files, keystrokes, and cameras with unsettling ease. That power comes from a simple fact: Teams is a legitimate workplace tool from a trusted multinational. But that legitimacy is exactly what scammers exploit. They hide in plain sight.

Tan Chenxin, a Chinese software engineer living in New York, nearly fell for a similar scheme. He got a call. Someone claimed to be part of a joint police investigation involving US Customs and Border Protection and Chinese law enforcement, and they told him to download Webex for a video call. So he looked it up. “I looked up Webex and found that it was developed by Cisco, a world-leading cybersecurity software provider,” Tan says, and because he happened to know what Cisco is, he convinced himself it was fine. But he realized it was a scam before transferring any money. That close call changed everything.

Chinese apps like WeChat and Xiaohongshu have been dealing with investment fraud for years. Western platforms appear far less prepared.

Webex and Zoho's Cliq are facing similar problems. It's ugly out there. According to an analysis of over 150 Webex reviews on Apple's Chinese app store since February 2025, 71 percent referenced being scammed on the platform, and that's a staggering number for any enterprise tool. Cisco didn't respond to requests for comment. Zoho identified "a limited number of instances involving scammers using Zoho Cliq to defraud victims." But they're not sitting still. The company disabled online payments to Cliq in China as of August 27, suspended accounts created by the suspected scammer, and plans to discontinue the free version of Cliq in China, a move that tightens the screws on potential abuse while pushing legit users toward paid tiers. So trust is the real casualty here.

For Zhao, the hardest part is the silence. When she was defrauded in May, Teams showed no warning about the conversation. When she talked to the scammer again in August, the app displayed a banner reading: “Don’t share confidential info or your screen with people you don’t know. Report anything suspicious.” It was too little, too late. The warning did not stop him from trying again. It just gave Zhao a chance to watch him work.