French prosecutors start pimping probe into sugar daddy website

French prosecutors opened a probe yesterday into a website that brings together older "sugar daddy" men and young women over suspicions of "organised pimping", a judicial source said.

Launched in 2010, the website www.sugardaddy.fr brings together men "comfortable with their lives" looking for "young attractive and ambitious women" who want to be "pampered".

"Are you looking for a mature and elegant partner to spoil you?" asks the website, which posts messages from women as young as 18 and mostly older men. Vincent Veyrat-Masson, one of the founders of the Phoenix Corp group that oversees around 30 specialised dating websites including sugardaddy.fr, denied any illegal activities.

"Our editorial line simply does the exact opposite to one of our other sites, 'Cougar Rencontre' [Meet Cougars] - which targets encounters with mature women - by offering this time to find mature men," he said.

But the Action Team Against Pimping association, which made a legal complaint last week, said that "under the cover of a dating website, the site sugardaddy.fr seems to correspond to an online pimping service".