Recent research, published in The Gerontologist, examined the sales practices of a long-defunct and disgraced company that sold unsuitable annuities to seniors. The tricks and techniques are a sobering lesson for professionals looking to combat elder abuse.

Financial fraud costs U.S. consumers billions of dollars every year, and the elderly are prime targets.

The salesmen used predatory tactics to manipulate elderly people into buying products that are unnecessary, ill suited to their needs or outright fraudulent.

The authors studied transcripts of sales training meetings conducted by the defunct Alliance for Mature Americans. In the 90s, the Alliance used predatory practices to sell millions of dollars worth of annuities to seniors. The Alliance shut its doors amidst numerous fraud lawsuits.

The authors’ findings:

Thematic analysis revealed two predominant themes. The first, indoctrination of trainees using incentives and neutralization techniques, included strategies to condition new sales agents to “buy-in” to Alliance’s values and goals. This was accomplished by promising financial and travel incentives and affirming the legitimacy of the company and its products to normalize unethical selling practices. Neutralization techniques—verbal and symbolic rationalizations for unethical behavior (Sykes & Matza, 1957)—were used to instill a sense of moral authority, whereby sales agents were told they had an ethical obligation to “protect” older adults’ estates from probate.

The second major theme, persuasion tactics, included building rapport and emotional arousal to elicit compliance and scapegoating, whereby the salesperson claimed to offer financial protection from unscrupulous probate lawyers and high estate taxes. Messages were specifically crafted to convince clients to disclose personal and financial information and divert them from evaluating the risks of the transaction, reading the documents they signed, and consulting with financial planners or legal counsel.

The paper was authored by Marguerite DeLiema, BS,* Yongjie Yon, MA, and Kathleen H. Wilber, PhD, all of the University of Southern California; and published in the April 2016 issue of The Gerontologist.

The full paper, titled “Tricks of the Trade: Motivating Sales Agents to Con Older Adults“, and its findings can be accessed here [subscription required.]

A chart of a few of the specific sales tactics can be seen below:

Credit: “Tricks of the Trade: Motivating Sales Agents to Con Older Adults”