PARIS (AP) — Based on their experience of hosting Taylor Swift, the management team at the Paris venue for Celine Dion ‘s grand concert comeback is 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’s 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.”

“Where there is massive demand and widespread excitement, fraudsters see a golden opportunity,” says Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity firm that works with the international police agency Interpol and others.

The first of the 26 shows is Saturday.

Here are some tips to avoid the traps:

For the few tickets left, use only authorized sites

The Plenitude Arena, hosting Dion for 16 dates in September and October and another 10 in May, says 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.

“That’s when the public will be very exposed to these scammers,” Céline Trioux, the arena’s marketing director, said in an Associated Press interview.

“People are going to wake up and think, ‘Oh, right, I didn’t get a ticket, everyone is going, I want to go,’ or ‘I’ve seen the first show all over social media, it looks amazing, I’m going to find a ticket by any means possible.’ And that’s also when the scammers will be out in force.”

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

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

“I strongly advise against buying a ticket from an individual or from someone advertising it on social media, because there’s no way to know whether it’s genuine or whether the same ticket will also be sold to other people,” Trioux said.

Check URLs to avoid fraudulent sites

Group-IB says it found an array of fraudulent websites that impersonated official ticketing platforms as well as the official sites for Dion and for the arena.

Some URL web addresses were close to the real thing, like celinedion.co (instead of celinedion.com), ticketmaster-celinedion.fr (instead of ticketmaster.fr ) or axs-billetterie.com (instead of axs.com ).

“The first reflex should always be to check the website’s URL,” Trioux said.

She said lawyers identified nearly 200 fraudulent Dion-related sites and social media accounts that offered tickets but that “when we shut down one copycat website, another one opens.”

“It’s a constant battle,” Trioux added. “It’s impossible to close them all because technology is advancing faster than legal authorities can act.”

The Paris concert section of Dion’s site has clickable links to all of the authorized ticket sellers.

The arena says it will help fraud victims

Group-IB says fraudsters appear to have reused scamming tools that were also deployed to target Oasis fans when the Britpop band reunited for a tour in 2025 and during Swift’s 2023-2024 Eras tour.

When Swift played four Paris shows in 2024, the Plenitude Arena had to turn away about “400 to 500 people who had been duped,” Trioux said.

She said that for Dion, the arena is expecting possibly hundreds of fraud victims each night.

The concert series is 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. She last performed briefly in Paris at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2024, wowing with “Hymne à l’amour” (Hymn to love) from atop the Eiffel Tower in the rain.

Fans are traveling from far afield to reconnect with one of the most decorated artists in pop music history. For those who have been scammed, the shock could be brutal.

“We’ll have a complaints desk for all these people, because they will generally discover the problem at the entrance, when they present their fake ticket,” Trioux said.

“Staff will be there to receive them and explain the procedure to follow if they wish to file a police complaint.”

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John Leicester, The Associated Press