At least five different women have posted pictures of the notes they received on Wellington Facebook group Vic Deals.
One woman said she was “f***ing bewildered” by the note, while another woman described the behaviour as “very, very weird and icky”.
The notes they posted vary slightly in wording, but all of them claim the man is “lonely” and will “spoil” the receiver “rotten”.
Some of them said the man would “buy you anything you want, even a brand-new car”.
The Herald tried contacting the wannabe sugar daddy for comment but he did not respond.
33-year-old Breanna Wenham received this note from the alleged sugar daddy on New Year’s Eve. Photo / Supplied.
Breanna Wenham, 33, reported the sugar daddy to police, saying she felt “unsafe” when he approached her on New Year’s Eve.
She was walking through Newtown to meet up with a friend when she said she noticed him standing on a street corner, scanning the crowd.
When she passed him, he stopped her and asked for directions into the city centre.
Wenham said she was politely helping him when he asked her if she was on social media. She declined to share her accounts, but he started telling her he was depressed and lonely.
The man offered Wenham $300 in exchange for friendship and gave her a note.
That’s when she realised she had seen posts about him on Vic Deals before.
“I remembered I had thought at the time, ‘why not just go on a sugar baby website?’” she said.
“It’s wrong to approach strangers on the street for what is essentially sex work.”
Wenham said she realised who he was in the moment, but didn’t feel safe enough to question his behaviour.
One of the screenshots posted to Facebook, showing texts between a Wellington woman and someone offering money for companionship. Photo / Supplied.
In recent months, there have been other instances of similar handwritten notes being put up in public spaces with a different phone number attached.
In July, a young woman started texting the number on one of those notes and posted the long text chain to Facebook.
The screenshots showed the messages started off friendly but became gradually insulting and confrontational.
The sender called her “baby bear”, said they were disappointed to find out the woman wasn’t single and asked for voice messages and selfies.
Social media users have pointed out that although those notes were signed off with a woman’s name, they used the phrase “spoil rotten” and suggested they might be written by the same sugar daddy.
A sugar daddy is typically an older, wealthy man who pays a younger person for online communication, physical companionship or sexual acts.
Sex worker advocate Dame Catherine Healy said sugar dating was considered a part of “sex work culture”.
It could be argued what the Wellington man was currently offering sat in a “grey area”, said Healy, who is the national co-ordinator of the Aotearoa New Zealand Sex Workers Collective.
If he moved into the territory of offering to pay for sexual activities, that would be sex work, she said.
Police are encouraging anyone who sees the Wellington man passing out notes to contact the police by calling 105.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.