On August 23, 1973 Jan-Erik Olsson pulled a loaded submachine gun and fired at the ceiling of a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. After wounding a policeman, Olsson and a partner took four bank employees hostage, herding them into a bank vault.

He then quickly established a first-name relationship with the hostages and, over a period of six days, swung back and forth between threats of physical harm and acts of thoughtfulness, created an atmosphere where the hostages’ fear of and reliance on their captor resulted in a reaction now referred to as Stockholm Syndrome.

The robber’s benevolent acts curried the sympathy of his hostages. “When he treated us well,” said one hostage, “we could think of him as an emergency God.” They began to fear the police more than their captor. One hostage called the Prime Minister and pleaded with him to let the robbers take her with them in the escape car, saying that she fully trusted him and she feared that the police “…will attack and cause us to die.”

Once the robbers were captured, the hostages embraced, kissed, and shook hands with them. One shouted to the handcuffed criminals, “…I will see you again.” Some days later, one asked a psychiatrist, “Is there something wrong with me? Why don’t I hate them?” The psychiatrists explained that their experience was similar to that of a shell-shocked POW—the hostages had become so emotionally indebted to their abductors that they began to see the abductors, rather than the rescuers, as their saviors.

Just think, four people—all young, healthy, and in complete control of their faculties—and every one of them was totally brainwashed over a period of just six days…six days.

A great deal of financial elder abuse comes through deception and undue influence very similar to this sort of brainwashing,. It most often takes place in locations where there are no witnesses to step in. Usually, it starts out clothed in a velvet glove, but it ends all too frequently in tragedy—and even violence and death. It comes from family, bankers, lawyers, financial advisors, helpful neighbors, tradesmen, housekeepers, caregivers, and total strangers.

Most of us know a woman in her 70’s or early 80’s—a mother whose husband of many years, the person who dealt with home repairmen and almost all financial decisions, is now gone. One who has begun to find more and more of her friends names showing up on the obituary page, and others who can no longer drive. One whose children live hectic lives with children, grandchildren, and jobs. And the winter weather keeps her at home and alone too much.

A couple of friends may be trying to get her to follow their move to sunny Florida. She is in excellent health, she has all her wits about her, and her kids have been worried about the direction her life has been taking, so everyone decides Florida is just the answer

Things look good—she found a nice house to buy, the kids talk to her every few days and are delighted to hear she has landed next to a lovely couple who drop in every few days to make sure she is OK and offer to do her shopping at the same time they do theirs.

The neighbor husband says she does not need to hire someone to mow her tiny lawn—he is happy to do it when he mows his own lawn.

When she is not feeling well, the wife recommends a doctor, takes her there, and then brings her soup for the next few days.

Soon, she is frequently receiving gifts of homemade meals and flowers from their garden.

Her roof springs a leak and he offers to deal with the roofing man for her and, when she writes the check for the work, he mentions that he has a nephew who is very good at helping seniors increase their income.

The nephew is a lovely young man. But, she thinks she will just keep this to herself and not tell her children. “They always think I’m helpless… wait until they see how much money I make,” she thinks.

The neighbors take her to a social club, and for the first time in a long time she is with a group of people laughing and dancing and enjoying themselves. A very nice man asks her to dance. He’s a little younger than she but later he calls and asks her out to dinner. He brings her gifts—he’s a bit flirty—it feels so good—she’s alive again.

The seduction has begun.

Or perhaps it’s a widower in his 60s. He married his high school sweetheart. Though life gave them some bumps in the road from time to time, they were a team, they always got through it together. Now he has sold his business for a very healthy sum, or retired with a good pension, and they are going to do all the things they could not do while busy raising children and building his business. Then, disease killed all those dreams. Now, he is alone without the one who always had his back and who had always been there to bring sunshine into a grey day.

At first, friends made sure to keep him busy, but months go buy and that dwindles off. He has lunch with his retired friends, and plays golf as often as weather allows. He has taken to going to movies in the afternoon—not much fun alone.

He can never find anything he is looking for; he keeps forgetting to renew his prescriptions, he ran out of clean shirts and can’t find the name of the laundry. Some nights he eats at a restaurant alone, others he stops by the Chinese take-out or that pizza place they had both liked, or he gets one of those delicious roast beef sandwiches they always ordered from their favorite deli.

When he gets home, the lights are off—it’s so quiet. She always had music playing. He opens his sandwich, gets himself a drink, and settles into his cozy chair. The sandwich doesn’t taste as good as it used to. He turns on the news, but there is no one to discuss it with, and it’s all the same old same old anyway so he turns it off. He settles in with a book—it’s so quiet.

After a few months, he hires someone to take care of the housework. Her resume is impressive. She is working to support her unwell mother while trying to save enough to go to go back to college—It’s also nice to have someone around who is always interested in what he has to say.

She makes things he likes to eat and brings them to him as a surprise. Soon she is cooking dinner for him. She seems to always know just where everything is. He has clean shirts, his meds are always at the bedside, dinner is hot and delicious—almost as good as his wife’s. She is young yet she finds his conversation fascinating. She tells him he is much more interesting than men her age. She tells him, to look at him, no one would believe he was in his 60s.

Now, the lights are on when he gets home—it’s no longer quiet, and there is someone there who finds him attractive and interesting.

The seduction has begun. It may take more than six weeks, but it won’t take long.

Margaret Singer, Ph.D. (1922–2003) was a clinical psychologist and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a nationally renowned expert on cults and brainwashing. In the 1990s doctor Singer, by that time a senior citizen herself, turned her attention to the problem of undue influence in elder abuse, saying, “People who are clearly competent from a legal and psychological standpoint are making decisions that just don’t make sense to us. Undue influence seems to offer an explanation… People use their roles to exploit the trust, dependency, and fear of others…They use this power to deceptively gain control over decision making.”

I am a good example of a tough old bird who wants to help the other old birds see to it that their roofs and swings and cages don’t get stolen.