Scammers Exploit Microsoft Teams to Run Large-Scale Romance and Investment Frauds in China
Victims in China report that fraudsters are using Microsoft Teams to lure them into romance and cryptocurrency scams, resulting in losses up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Zhao, a woman in her thirties from Beijing, was defrauded of over $100,000 in May after a scammer claiming to work for Microsoft shifted their conversation from Xiaohongshu to Microsoft Teams and offered a cryptocurrency investment that promised rapid returns. After taking out multiple bank loans, she discovered the fraudster had vanished and she could no longer access the Teams account to provide chat logs to authorities.
Her public recounting prompted dozens of other Chinese victims to come forward, reporting losses from $1,500 up to $300,000, with only one case of partial recovery. Chinese law-enforcement agencies have begun issuing alerts that name Teams as a tool for fraud, and Maimai now automatically warns users when high-risk terms appear. Microsoft responded by displaying a caution banner in Teams, ending the personal version of the app in China, and pledging to investigate abuse, while similar scams have been identified on Cisco’s Webex and Zoho’s Cliq, leading Zoho to suspend suspect accounts and halt free-version payments in the country.
Why it matters
The story shows how trusted global software can be weaponized for large-scale fraud, affecting thousands of Chinese users and prompting regulatory and corporate responses.
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