An undercover journalist has been left stunned by her discovery that British women can earn up to £3,000 every week from wealthy benefactors by working as a sugar baby.
In Secrets of Sugar Baby Dating, a BBC documentary airing tonight, Tiffany Sweeney, 28, from London, meets with ‘sugar babies’ from the UK and America who are paid to date older men for money.
She meets up with Valentina and is shocked to discover she can earn up to £3,000 a week from just one of her sugar daddies.
And later, Tiffany, is horrified to hear of one woman in America, Chandler, 26, from New York, who says she was scammed out of $2,600 after she had threesome with a man who never paid her.
Tiffany Sweeney (pictured), 28, from London, investigates the popularity of sugar dating in the UK and US in BBC documentary, Secrets of Sugar Baby Dating
US-based Chandler, 26, (pictured right on the show with Tiffany) was scammed by a sugar daddy earlier this year, after agreeing to a threesome for around $2,600
A sugar baby is the name of younger women whose lavish lifestyles are paid for by rich, older men.
Valentina admits she loves that the work supports her lavish lifestyle and knows what is expected of her in order to earn the wage.
She explained:’I can’t find a level with the boys my age, all they want to do is sit at home and play FIFA.’
‘These men don’t want women who will come to them and grumble about their problems and the stresses of their life.’
Valentina suggests the average sugar baby in the UK can earn up to £3,000 a week and says she ‘maintains a relationship with these men’
And in one particularly shocking moment, Valentina reveals she often dresses up as a school girl for her sugar daddies.
She explained:’They want youthfulness injected back into their lives.’
And she refutes that it’s sex work, saying:’I maintain a relationship with these men.’
Throughout the episode the presenter Tiffany interacts with a number of sugar babies, including US-based Chandler, 26, who had a threesome with a man known as Imran Khan.
The former sugar baby revealed she agreed to the arrangement with Imran as she was desperate for money to pay for her rent and he promised she could earn around $2,600.
Chandler (pictured) revealed she was desperate for rent money and believed having sex for cash, although illegal in the US, was a quicker way of earning than working for two weeks in New York
She says the 36-year-old graduate student at New York University Centre, who portrayed himself as an investment banker named Ron, used PayPal to scam her out of paying for the arrangement.
Speaking about the months leading up to the scam, she said: ‘I did everything you do when you have no money, you don’t eat, just $1 pizza, you do what you can. If you want to have a good life in New York you have to have a side hustle and so I discovered sugar dating and it was easy.
She went on: ‘You just go on a site meet a guy and he starts talking to you and offering money. At first I thought you could just go on a date. There was one guy he gave me like $200 but if you want to make more money, you’re going to have to sleep with them.
‘When you got the cash it’s this exhilarating feeling, you’ve got all this money in and your hand and you’ve just had sex for 20 minutes. I make that amount of money in two weeks in New York, so it’s like for 20 minutes, why am I not going to do this again?
Chandler says she was swept up by how easy it was to make money as a sugar baby, and ended up being scammed out of thousands of dollars
She continued: ‘When I got really desperate for rent I tried it again, in March. We were getting ready in the cab doing our makeup as we were heading towards him, we were a little crunched for time.’
The sugar daddy told Chandler what to wear as well as how to do her makeup and hair.
After convincing her to make the hotel booking, Imran asked Chandler to confirm the details by sending a screen shot.
She explained: ‘So we go to the hotel and he’s sitting in the lobby, he doesn’t look like his picture.
She said she’d be haunted by the experience forever, and had been left devastated by what she had done
‘We go up to the room and he’s like get out your phone and I’ll pay you. He’s like you’re going to request whatever like $2,500 or $2,600.’
She continued:’He goes to request it and says OK, everything’s all set, take off your clothes. The act happened and he seemed really into power dynamics, he wanted you to be super submissive and super thankful of him giving you all of his money. He took turns with us and had us all to himself and just did what he wanted.
‘We like felt good after because we were like ‘oh its over, we just made 12000 dollars, this is great’ and then on the subway ride home I’m looking at my account and I don’t see the money.
‘When are you going to accept the request, because he didn’t actually like accept it. And then it was silent, like he’s not going to give me this money.
Chandler couldn’t believe that she had been scammed out of money after having sex with a sugar daddy
Chandler couldn’t believe what had happened, saying: ‘My heart dropped, it just sunk in my chest. Like oh my God now, I’m actually in debt, now I can’t pay my rent.’
Tiffany whose highest payment offer while undercover was £250, believes situations like Chandler’s aren’t uncommon.
In her experience she says it felt like the Sugar Daddies had figured out a ‘code’ to get around the rules of the sugar dating websites.
‘The terminology that the guys would use, there was lots of reference to being a pleaser and asking if you’re into older men. I was like I’m eighteen,’ she said.
Tiffany revealed that most sugar dating websites don’t require age verification for standard members and that it’s possible to make contact without having a profile photo
Tiffany (pictured) advises university students to speak to someone they can trust before getting involved in sugar dating, an estimated half a million UK students are sugar dating
The 28-year-old believes because society can be judgmental, many parents would assume that their child can’t be caught up in sugar dating
‘I felt uncomfortable from the get go, I felt like I was the weak one in the conversation. They were really powerful saying we can be discreet and be intimate. They were very clever with their wording and I was just like wow. It was like a code.
‘They had learned a way to get around this website and the people who’ve been blocked have found ways around it.
‘I imagine when it first started back in the day, people would’ve been a lot more explicit but I feel like overtime the website has tried to clamp down and put these terms and conditions in place. But with everything there’s way around it.’
The sugar dating websites which don’t require age verification for standard members count no escorting or human trafficking among their list of rules.
Secrets of Sugar Baby Dating airs on BBC1 at 10:30pm tonight and will be available on iPlayer