How to spot a trustworthy gigolo and avoid scams

Anyone looking around for the first time notices it fast: every site promises the same thing. Discreet, professional, trustworthy. Those are words, and words cost nothing. What you need is things you can actually check before you commit to anything.

Below is what goes wrong in practice, and what to watch for. Not to scare you, because most dates go perfectly fine. But because the things that go wrong almost always go wrong before the date, and that is something you can do something about.

Where things really go wrong

Not in the bedroom. The risks that exist are duller and easier to avoid than the ones people imagine.

1) Paying up front to someone you have never spoken to. This is by far the most common scam. You are asked for a deposit to “lock in the date”, the money leaves your account, and then nobody replies. Sometimes a second request follows: something went wrong, another amount is needed.

2) No conversation about boundaries. This is the risk people talk about least and that happens most. Someone who does not ask beforehand what you do and do not want is not going to ask during the date either.

3) Someone other than the man in the photo. With agencies, a stand-in sometimes shows up because the booked person drops out. With independents, the photos are sometimes of someone else, or of himself but twenty years and a different build ago. A slick studio shot with no date on it tells you nothing about who rings your doorbell. With an agency, ask explicitly whether it is guaranteed to be the same person you chose, and get that confirmed in the message that locks in the date.

The checklist

Sixteen things you can check before you commit to anything. They do not all carry the same weight, and it is not a form to tick off. Most of them cost you two minutes.

If you want the same material laid out in the order of the evening, from first browsing to the day after, with the red and green flags for each phase, see the safety checklist.

What it costs

1) Check whether rates are on the site, and how high they are. If no amount appears anywhere, the money conversation only comes once you have nearly booked, exactly the moment when saying no is hardest. That is not proof of bad intent, but it is a choice that does not work in your favour.

The amount itself says just as much. Under two hundred euros an hour, nobody keeps a professional practice running: travel time, a conversation beforehand, preparation and aftercare all have to come out of that. What is left forces volume. Then you are date three of the day, and you will feel it in the attention you get.

2) Ask for the total. Including travel costs and any surcharges. A provider who cannot give you a clear answer up front will not give you one afterwards either.

3) Watch for haste and scarcity. “One spot left this month”, a discount if you book today, a deposit that has to happen now because otherwise the date is gone. Those are sales tricks, and they sit oddly in a line of work where calm is the entire product. The reverse counts just as much: someone who goes quiet for days, mixes up appointments, or keeps reopening something that was already settled is not going to run the evening itself tightly either.

Who he is

4) Read reviews for their shape, not their score. Fake reviews are all the same length, equally positive, equally vague: plenty of adjectives, few details. Real experiences are uneven in tone and name specific moments. They also dare to say something that is not flattering.

Look at where they sit, too. Only on his own site, all from the same week, nowhere anyone else can verify them? Then they are copy, not experiences.

5) Run a reverse image search. Not with an atmospheric photo, since those come off a stock site on nearly every page, but with a photo that is meant to be him. Drag a portrait like that into Google Images or TinEye. If it comes back as a stock model or on profiles under a different name, you know enough. It costs two minutes and filters out most of it.

6) Check whether he can be found anywhere himself. Only a contact form and no number, a phone number that changes every few months, a WhatsApp account from last week: then there is nothing that lasts. This is not about registers, more on those further down. It is about whether anything exists that you could still trace in six months. If you cannot find him then, nobody can.

The contact

7) Look at who you are actually talking to. If everything runs through a booking form, a planner or a reception desk, then before the date you have not exchanged a word with the man who will walk in on you. Your wishes and your boundaries have been passed on instead of discussed, and what gets lost along the way you only notice on the night itself. With an agency there is always a middleman. Then ask explicitly whether you still get to speak to him yourself beforehand.

Because everything that is not discussed beforehand has to happen that evening anyway. Then you are explaining what you do and do not want while he is already inside and you would rather have been busy with something else long ago. That costs you the first half hour, and that is exactly the half hour that could have been yours. A conversation the week before costs nothing and buys you an evening where you no longer have to think about any of it.

That conversation is the proof at the same time. How someone digs into what you do and do not want says more than any reassuring line on his site. A form asks nothing back.

8) Call or video-call before you commit to anything. One ten-minute conversation says more than a whole website. You hear whether someone digs deeper. Whether someone is in a hurry, and whether the conversation flows on its own. A video call answers the photo question right away: you see how he looks now. Anyone who refuses to call drops out.

9) Notice who asks back. Someone who digs into your boundaries rather than your wish list knows what he is doing. That is maybe the best signal there is, and it is one you cannot fake without experience.

10) Notice whether he says no to anything himself. “Anything goes, anything is allowed, I do it all” sounds generous and is a sales line. Anyone who takes this work seriously has things that are not for him, and he names them plainly. No judgement about who does do them; the point is that he can name a boundary. Everything can be discussed, nothing is required. Someone who has no boundary anywhere himself is not going to recognise yours later either.

What happens to your data

11) Look at the website and check whether you get clarity on these four questions, and listen to the shape of the answer. How do we communicate? Do you store anything, and for how long? How does payment work, and what will I see on my statement? And what do you do if something goes wrong? Someone who has thought about this answers briefly and concretely. Someone who talks around it never thought about it, and then your discretion hangs on his memory.

12) Notice what he wants to know about you. A copy of your ID “for verification”. Your full name and address before anything is settled. A request for your Instagram. None of that is needed to arrange an evening. The less someone asks and keeps, the less can ever surface somewhere, and that is exactly the side of the story that lands on you when things go wrong.

Safety and health

13) Look at who decides the place. Someone who only wants to receive you at his own home, and will not come to you or accept a hotel you book yourself, keeps control with himself. There are decent reasons to work from home, but then you hear them right away. Just ask.

Receiving you at his place is not a bad idea in itself, by the way; it just calls for different preparation than a date at yours. What changes the moment you step through his door, and what you arrange beforehand, is in private reception at a gigolo’s place: what to watch for.

14) Watch who books the hotel. That room should be in your name. The law does not let me reserve it for you, and that goes for every independent: the moment he arranges the room, it becomes his workplace, and a permit question hangs off that. If someone offers to book it anyway, he is working outside the rules, or he is not arranging it himself and there is someone behind him who handles the rooms. Thinking along about which hotel is comfortable is fine, of course; I am happy to do that.

15) Ask about condoms and about testing. With a professional, condom use is not a negotiating point, and you can ask without any fuss when he was last tested. Anyone who wants to negotiate about it drops out. So does anyone who stays vague about how often he tests. This feels like the most awkward question on the list and is in practice the most ordinary one.

16) Ask what happens if you stop halfway, and what comes after. Stopping is always allowed and needs no explanation; notice whether he says that himself. Ask about aftercare too. On most sites that word does not appear, while the reaction to an intense evening often only comes once you are alone again.

About that Chamber of Commerce registration and that permit

A question that comes up often: is a gigolo registered with the Chamber of Commerce, and can you check that? The honest answer is that a registration gives you no guarantee whatsoever about trustworthiness. There is no test and no seal of approval. Anyone can register.

What a registration does do is put a trade name and an address in a public register. With a municipal permit for a sex business, it also states in so many words what it is about. Those registers get requested and resold, and every so often a file like that simply ends up out in the open through a data breach. After that, the name is tied to the word sex work for good, and everyone who ever sent a transfer to it is tied to it as well.

That is exactly why some providers do not register anywhere. It saves you a trail. So do not weigh whether someone is registered, but whether you can verify who you are dealing with, and whether you can pay without anything being left behind.

As for safety on your side

Regardless of who turns up, there are three things you can always do that together take away most of the risk.

Do not pay up front to someone you have not spoken to. At the start of the date is normal. Transferring the full amount weeks in advance is not.

Choose the place and the time yourself. At your home or in a hotel you know or book yourself. Not at an address you do not know.

Let someone know where you are. Arrange with a friend that she calls or texts at an agreed moment. That can happen in the same room; you do not need to slip off to the toilet for it. A professional reads that as sense, not as distrust.

And if it does go wrong

If it does not feel right during the date, you stop. One word is enough and you owe no explanation. If something happened that is weighing on you, you can turn to the Centrum Seksueel Geweld (Centre for Sexual Violence) on 0800-0188, free and reachable day and night, even if you doubt whether it was “bad enough”.

If you suspect coercion or exploitation of someone else, Meld Misdaad Anoniem (Report Crime Anonymously) is there on 0800-7000.

Want to see how I score on these points myself? You will find that alongside other providers on Compare, including the points where I am not the best choice.