Ticket scammers prey on Celine Dion fans desperate to attend her Paris concerts

The management team at the Paris venue for Celine Dion's grand concert comeback has been bracing to deliver devastating news to hundreds of her fans: ‘Sorry, you appear to have been scammed; your tickets are fake.’

The Grammy-winning star's long-awaited return to the concert stage after years away from touring has unleashed massive pent-up demand for tickets.

It was a perfect storm for scammers who have wormed their way into fans' online communities and set up fraudulent ticketing websites to manipulate and rob fans of both their money and hopes of being able to say, “I was there.”

The Plenitude Arena, hosting Dion for 16 dates in September and October and another 10 in May, said the highest risk of scams is when tickets first go on sale—which was April for the upcoming concerts and June for the 2027 series—and in the shows' immediate build-up.

The shows sold out immediately, although a few VIP packages with Champagne and other perks are still available for between 1,099 euros and 2,990 euros (US$1,276 and $3,473) on the arena's website.

One other possibility was to buy tickets from people who no longer want theirs. But the arena says the only way to do that safely is on three sites that are authorized for resales: AXS France, Ticketmaster France, and Fnac Spectacles.

Generally, just 4% to 8% of people who buy tickets for the arena end up not wanting or not being able to use them.

Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity firm that works with the international police agency Interpol and others, and the Plenitude Arena both say they found an array of fraudulent websites that impersonated official ticketing platforms as well as the official sites for Dion and for the arena.

The concert series was a major milestone for the 58-year-old Quebec-born singer, her first since she revealed in 2022 her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.