Cape Breton concert-goers pay a high price after falling prey to ticket resellers

Officials at Centre 200 in Sydney, N.S., say customers are being duped into paying three to four times more than the actual ticket price for concert seats. 

Facilities manager Paul MacDonald said customers in the area have lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, after being tricked into buying online tickets from resellers. 

"It happens on every show and more than one person on every show," said MacDonald. 

"Especially on shows that have a potential large pre-sale — it happens more than I would like, let's put it that way." 

The 5,000-seat facility is Cape Breton's largest entertainment venue and is home to a variety of events such as hockey games, musical performances and sporting events.

MacDonald said Ticketmaster.ca is under contract to provide online ticketing for Centre 200 events, but there are at least three other websites that are reselling tickets using a similar name or appearance.

"People think they're on our site … and before you know it, they purchase tickets and then on their credit card bill, they see a charge in U.S. dollars. One of our shows recently, the total ticket cost would have been around $160 Canadian and on their [bill], I believe it was $575 U.S. That's a big difference."

MacDonald said the tickets purchased are still legitimate, but it is the scammers who are pocketing the extra cash. 

"I'm just trying to get it out there and make people aware. When you're purchasing online — whether it's tickets or anything else — make sure it's from a legitimate website, or our website …. and if anything comes up in U.S. dollars, it certainly should be a red flag."

A spokesperson for the RCMP said reselling tickets is not illegal in Nova Scotia. 

However, Euclides Neto, senior researcher at the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity at the University of New Brunswick said it could be considered criminal activity. 

"A lot of countries around the world are working on defining the regulation for different technologies, right? But then generally speaking in Canada, we consider this as a fraud. If the property values are less than $5,000 or if they are more than that, we have different sentences, but they are definitely illegal."

Neto said there are a variety of ways people can protect themselves, such as ensuring their computer software is up-to-date, checking the domain name, and by looking for clues since scam websites often include misspelled words or symbols of trustworthiness such as images of padlocks and safety certificates.

When a ticket has been bought through a scam site, Neto suggests contacting police, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and any bank that was involved.

MacDonald said he believes one of reasons so many people are being conned by the scam websites is the fact that they appear at the top of search engine results for "Centre 200 tickets." 

Centre 200 staff are now reaching out to online companies to see if they can change the way the search results are filtered.