GoKawiilZhao, a 30-something woman living in Beijing, says she lost over $100,000 in May to a romance scammer who claimed to be a researcher working for Microsoft. After initially chatting Zhao up on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, he asked to move their conversation to Microsoft Teams, where he was happy to provide her with an account and password she could use.
“I didn’t think much because I had used this app before. And since it was developed by Microsoft, I kind of trusted it,” says Zhao, who requested to use only her last name for privacy reasons.
Once they switched to Teams, the scammer began promising to build a future with Zhao when they eventually got together and introduced her to a cryptocurrency investment project, which he said would turn a profit much faster than trading stocks. Zhao says that at first, she was excited about the opportunity, and even took out loans from several banks so she could invest more.
Then the scammer disappeared with all of her money. Because she can no longer log into the Teams account he told her to use, she can’t share the chat logs with police.
After Zhao began talking about her experience on social media, she says she started hearing from dozens of other people in China who have fallen prey to the same scheme. They claim to have lost anywhere from $1,500 to $300,000, and only one reported that they were able to recover some of the funds—by tracking down the recipient’s bank account.
The victims all describe the same pattern. At some point, they were instructed to download Microsoft Teams and log in using credentials provided by the scammers. The tactic has become so common that some local law enforcement bureaus in China have issued warnings explicitly naming Teams as a tool used by scammers, with one even describing it as a “fraud-related app.” Maimai, a Chinese platform similar to LinkedIn, told Chinese media outlets last year that if it detected high-risk keywords in messages like “Teams” and “Skype,” it would automatically warn users about how to avoid getting scammed.
For years, alleged scam victims have been writing angry reviews of Microsoft Teams on Chinese app stores, some warning others not to download it. WIRED analyzed the past 18 months of reviews of Teams on Apple’s Chinese app store, and found that out of 500, 30 percent included explicit complaints about scammers. The oldest review calling out scams dated all the way back to 2022.
“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,” reads one review from January of this year. “This was unquestionably a ‘pig-butchering’ scam. Beware of fraud—this was a bitter and costly lesson!”
Microsoft says scammers routinely exploit trusted brands and communication platforms to carry out social engineering schemes. As these tactics evolve, the company says it “investigates reports of abuse, takes action against accounts that violate our policies, and continues to strengthen protections designed to identify and disrupt fraudulent activity,” Steven Masada, the global head of Microsoft’s digital crimes division, said in a statement to WIRED.
In June, Microsoft started displaying a general warning banner to Teams users in China cautioning them about common scams and urging them to be careful when sharing sensitive information. The company also discontinued the personal version of Teams in China, and the service is now only available in the country through enterprise accounts.