Don’t let sweet promises turn into bitter disappointment. On social networks and on dating platforms, supposed sugar daddies and mommies promise financial support in exchange for very little — or fake sugar babies offer their attention and companionship in exchange for financial support — but it’s often nothing but a nasty scam. Read on to learn how the sugar daddy scam works, how to spot one, and how to avoid it. Thankfully, it’s a breeze to prevent other types of online scams using technology — namely with the help of a cyberprotection solution such as Avira Free Security.
What are sugar daddies, sugar mommies, and sugar babies?
Your typical sugar daddy is an older, wealthy man who’s willing to give financial assistance to a younger person — the sugar baby — or to enable them to enjoy an upscale lifestyle with expensive trips, lavish meals, and other luxuries. In return, the sugar daddy receives companionship, attention, or emotional closeness as part of a straightforward arrangement.
The nature of the relationship can vary depending on the agreement, with the terms and the allowance — such as the amount and form of payment — usually agreed upon individually. This is not a traditional romantic relationship but a clearly defined agreement where mutual benefit is the main focus.
A sugar mommy is the female equivalent of a sugar daddy. She’s usually an older woman who’s financially independent who supports a younger man or woman. Here too, the relationship is based on a balanced exchange: Financial support or gifts in return for affection, time, or an emotional connection. Sugar mommies are less common than sugar daddies, but you see them more often now than before.
A sugar baby (or sugar babe) is a younger person who enters into a transactional relationship with a sugar daddy or sugar mommy, providing companionship in return for financial or material support. Some sugar babies specifically seek mentors, while others desire luxurious experiences or financial assistance during their studies.
Ideally, sugar daddies/mommies and sugar babies have a deal based on mutual agreement from which both sides benefit. There are now even special sugar dating platforms that bring together sugar daddies or mommies and sugar babies.
How does the sugar daddy scam work?
In a sugar daddy or sugar mommy scam, the scammer merely pretends to be a sugar daddy or a sugar mummy to trick money out of his or her victim or get their hands on sensitive data. To achieve their aim, the fake sugar daddies and mommies use techniques such as social engineering and catfishing.
They create fake profiles on online dating or social media platforms in which they portray themselves as wealthy men or women. Sometimes they also prove payments made to other sugar babies using fake screenshots or send photos of other happy sugar babies with their expensive gifts. Scammers are often located in non-European countries such as Africa and send mass messages to young women, sometimes quite indiscriminately.
Most sugar‑daddy scams work like classic advance‑fee scams: The scammer asks the victim to make an upfront payment — supposedly for verification purposes, processing, or fees — before the promised support is provided. And as unbelievable as it sounds, this scam obviously works often enough to be worthwhile.
Here’s the typical way a sugar daddy scam unfolds:
1. Establish contact
The sugar daddy scammer messages their target directly via an online dating or a social media platform, making an attractive offer. Such a message might read as follows: “I find you very attractive and would like to be your sugar daddy. I’ll pay you $1,500 a week and I only want to chat, nothing sexual.” Sometimes the sugar daddy scammer also pretends to be recently widowed and now very lonely to convince his victim of his honest intentions.
2. Move the chat off-platform
After a short while, the fake sugar daddy often persuades his victim to continue the conversation via instant messenger or text message as this makes it harder to trace communications.
3. Request money
The sugar daddy claims he wants to send money but first asks for a relatively small upfront payment (typically between $10 and $50) to cover transaction fees, confirm the person’s identity or account details, or as a sign of trust. The reason for this request is that the fake sugar daddy says he’s been let down in the past, with fake sugar babies simply vanishing into thin air following the initial payment.
4. Cut contact
But that is exactly what the scammer does: Once the payment has been made, the sugar daddy scammer either disappears right away or tries to demand further sums of money with flimsy excuses before finally vanishing into thin air.
How does the sugar baby scam work?
Although the terms sugar daddy scam and sugar baby scam are sometimes used synonymously, the somewhat rarer form of sugar baby scam involves a similar, but slightly different technique. In most cases, this isn’t a typical advance‑fee scam. Instead, the scammers’ approach is more similar to love or romance scamming.
In a sugar baby scam, a person poses as an attractive, young sugar baby looking for a wealthy benefactor. The fake sugar baby usually targets older and seemingly well-off people and tries to extort money from their victim through emotional manipulation.
Here’s the typical way a sugar baby scam unfolds:
1. Establish contact
Here too, contact is made via an online dating or a social media platform. Often the first message reads, “Hi daddy, I’m looking for someone to spoil me. And of course, I’ll give something back too. It’ll all be very discreet.” Or “You look like someone who knows how to treat a woman. Interested in a sugar arrangement?” To build trust or elicit sympathy, the fake sugar babes embellish their stories as their chats go on, pretending, for example, to be a penniless student or a single mother.
2. Move the chat off-platform
The fraudulent sugar baby convinces their victim to continue chatting on WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram.
3. Request money
Once an emotional bond has been established, the first emergency occurs: The rent needs to be paid, the mobile phone is broken, a family member is sick, or something similar. The fake sugar baby asks for urgent financial help outside of the agreement without giving anything in return. Sometimes the fake sugar baby also asks for money for an initial meeting (for example, for travel expenses or nice clothes), which of course never takes place.
4. Vanish
The sugar baby scammer tries to extract as much money as possible from their victim using various excuses. But sooner or later, once the scammer feels the victim no longer trusts them, asks too many questions, or starts asking for something in return, they abruptly cut of contact.
Tricks used by scammers posing as sugar daddies
Gift cards
Scammers posing as sugar daddies often ask for Google Play, Apple, Amazon, Steam, or Razer gift cards, claiming it’s for proof of trust or identity verification. That’s because these prepaid vouchers are difficult to refund or trace. The scammer only needs the code to use or resell the credit.
Transaction fees
Some scammers also claim that their bank needs the victim to pay a security deposit or activation fee before the money can be released. They assure their victim that this is a perfectly normal and legitimate process over which they have no influence. And what is a relatively small amount compared to when you stand to receive a much larger sum?
Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle
Whatever excuses they use, scammers often ask to be paid via services like PayPal’s Friends and Family, Cash App, Venmo, or Zelle. But with these unsecured peer-to-peer payments, it’s virtually impossible to get your money back. The same applies to payments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which scammers also like to ask for.
In some cases, the scammer also claims to have already made a payment via PayPal or Cash App, and sends a fake screenshot of the alleged payment or bogus email notifications. The victim thinks the money is on its way, but in reality nothing was ever sent. See our article on PayPal scams if you’d like to learn more.
Stolen credit cards and counterfeit checks
Some scammers also use stolen credit cards to send money to their victim, such as via Cash App or PayPal, as proof of their trustworthiness. They hope this will prompt the victim to make a verification payment in return. Once the true credit card holder spots the scam and reports the unauthorized payment, it will be reversed. However, by that point the victim has usually already made a verification payment to the scammer, which can’t be reversed.
Instead of using stolen credit cards to send money, scammers sometimes send counterfeit checks to prove their supposedly honest intentions. They then claim that they accidentally sent too high an amount and are now demanding a partial refund via a peer-to-peer payment or bank transfer. Unlike the scammer’s check, the victim’s payment is genuine and can’t be reversed.
Phishing
In some cases, the scammer also sends his victim a phishing link, asking them to verify their identity and bank details on the linked website. However, this will be a fake website of a well-known bank. The victim will then be asked to enter their name, date of birth, account number, and even TANs (transaction authorization numbers). As soon as the victim does this, their bank account is emptied. In other cases, the fake sugar daddy says he wants to send money via a payment service like PayPal, which, however, requires prior verification of the recipient. The scammer sends his victim a link to a fake login page of the payment service, where the victim is supposed to enter their login details. The entered data is then immediately misused by the fraudsters to withdraw money or carry out further transactions.
With this approach, scammers posing as sugar daddies exploit the ignorance of their often young victims, who sometimes don’t know that verification is unnecessary to receive money via these payment services.
Identity theft
Sometimes the supposed sugar daddy doesn’t ask for money but for personal information, bank account details or copies of ID documents for “verification” purposes or to draw up a contract. With this sensitive data, he can then steal the victim’s identity (called identity theft) and open an account, take out loans, or carry out other financial transactions in the name of his victim, causing significant damage.
Which platforms do sugar dating scammers use?
As mentioned, sugar daddy/mommy and sugar baby scammers mainly operate on popular social and dating platforms. This is why so many female users now report being inundated with sugar daddy messages, especially on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Instagram and Snapchat
On Instagram, scammers sometimes look specifically for people who post pictures with hashtags like #sugarbaby, #luxurylifestyle, or #needmoney. It’s also really easy to make contact on that platform. By contrast, Snapchat is a popular platform for scammers posing as sugar daddies — as well as other fraudsters, as you can read in our article on Snapchat scams — thanks to self-deleting chats and young user base.
TikTok
The same applies to TikTok, as illustrated by the videos tagged with #sugardaddyscam and similar hashtags, where female users report on their experiences with alleged sugar daddies. TikTok also features many lifestyle videos in which sugar babies rave about their luxurious lifestyles and show off their expensive gifts. Whether these sugar babies are real and their lives are actually as great as they seem, of course, is something that can’t be verified. But this creates a sense of longing, especially among younger people. The belief that they can earn a lot of money quickly and easily also makes them an easy target for sugar daddy scams.
You’ll also find fake sugar daddies on X (formerly Twitter), Discord, and Facebook. They look for young people in need of money by browsing relevant hashtags and public groups or communities, such as part-time job or student groups.
Online dating platforms
It goes without saying that online dating platforms like Facebook Dating, Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and Grindr as well as sugar dating platforms such as MySugarDaddy, SugarDaddy, GetASugar, Sugarbook, and Seeking, are also among the popular hunting grounds of scammers. Here they can search specifically for potentially susceptible victims and come across a target group that’s open to making new connections, although perhaps not as young and naive as on Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.
What can you do if you’ve been scammed?
- Break off all contact and block and report the scammer to the platform.
- Gather evidence. Secure as much information as possible (usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, sent links, account details, PayPal links, photos, etc.), take screenshots of any messages, and keep a record of your transactions.
- Tell your bank or payment service provider, and — if necessary — get your account blocked, especially if you’ve shared sensitive information with the scammer. If applicable, also change the login details for your online banking or payment service. A password manager can help you generate strong, complex passwords all without you needing to remember them.
- File a police report. Even if you’ve taken a small financial hit and it’s difficult to prosecute the perpetrators, this is an important step as it helps the police to identify fraud patterns, collect data, and uncover criminal networks. And if several similar reports start showing up, the chance of identifying the perpetrators increases.
- Customize your privacy settings to stop receiving messages from strangers. That’s because where there’s one sugar‑daddy scammer, there are usually more. And once you’ve responded to one, you often attract others.
How can you spot a sugar dating scammer?
Given all you know now, how can you tell if someone is a fake or genuine sugar daddy/mommy or a trustworthy sugar baby BEFORE you fall into the trap?
Watch out for these warning signs:
- The sugar daddy or baby’s profile has only a few followers, was only recently created, uses stock photos or AI-generated images, and contains little information.
- The sugar daddy or sugar baby asks you to continue chatting outside the platform.
- The sugar daddy demands payment from you. Reputable sugar daddies don’t ask for money — why would they? And the request to verify yourself using sensitive data on an external website really should raise a red flag.
- The sugar daddy refuses both personal meetings and phone calls, and only communicates via chat — and often with poor proficiency in the language.
- The sugar baby keeps postponing phone calls and personal meetings or cancels them at short notice.
- The sugar baby asks for money after only a short time and does not fulfill their part of the agreement.
How can you avoid a sugar daddy scam?
The good news is you’ve already taken the first step to protect yourself from sugar daddy scams by reading this article and getting clued up.
Here are some more tips:
- Ignore messages from strangers, which promise you a large sum of money for little in return. Especially if you have to pay upfront — which you should of course never do.
- Block the suspected scammer if you get suspicious and report them to the platform.
- Use reputable sugar dating platforms. If you want to meet a sugar daddy, a sugar mommy, or a sugar baby, use sugar dating portals that offer certain security standards (such as ID or photo verification or proof of assets for sugar daddies). Even a paid membership presents a higher hurdle for scammers posing as sugar daddies.
- Never share your telephone number or other personal details with a stranger. The same applies of course to intimate recordings, since these can be used for sextortion purposes.
- Protect yourself in general from online scams and cyberthreats such as by using Avira Free Security. It includes Avira Browser Safety, allowing you to protect yourself from malicious and phishing websites, among many other security features.
