Schneier on Security

Harry • June 11, 2011 1:16 AM

My wife, who runs her own hair salon by herself, was just robbed by a female
con-artist using hypnosis. Thief came in to her shop for a shampoo, after shampoo
thief asked her to go with her to get a massage. My wife said: are you nuts? I
have to work, keep the shop open. Next day, thief comes back, gets shampoo,
asks again, and grabs my wife’s hand this time. Thief tells my wife to put her
valuables in her purse, she obeys, and they go to the massage shop. Along the
way the thief instructs my wife NOT to talk to the many people she knows around
her shop, which she normally does, even too much so, she obeys again!
Thief also instructs her to tell the employees of massage shop that thief is
her sister, which she then obeys yet again. At massage shop, thief tells my
wife that she will watch her purse while she showers AND to take her jewelery
off and put it in the purse! She EVEN OBEYS this outrageous command!!!
After about 1-2 minutes in the shower she comes out of trance and goes outside,
too late, thief is gone with ALL her valuables! This just happened,
June 7, 2011

This crook hypnotist put my wife under a spell really fast and COMPLETELY,
had her under complete control AGAINST HER WILL and WITHOUT HER

KNOWLEDGE!!! Robbed her of all her valuables.

Reg, My wife was put into an unwilling state of compliance in the earliest
phase of the encounter, fully before anything happened that could produce
an emotionally charged situation. Her sister runs the shop right next to hers
and people she knew from other nearby shops were outside. She could
not utter a single plea for help from friends or family that were within arms
reach as the criminal hypnotist con-artist walked her to the massage shop
down the road, telling her NOT to talk to anyone she knows. Also, from
research I did after this happened, I learned about the Pattern Interrupt Handshake
to put a victim quickly into hypnotic trance. This is what happened on the crooks
second visit, the crook grabbed my wife’s hand and held it, the same as I saw

demonstrated in videos.

Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that hypnotism is a bad thing or that only bad people use it. In your burglar scenario, the crime would be the same to courts, but it would
greatly benefit the neighbors to know that break-ins were occurring on 2nd floor
windows by ladder or hover boots so that they could secure their windows. Hypnotizing
someone to make them fully helpless and even HELP the crook against their will
is scary. After it was over, my wife felt she was to blame because she didn’t do
anything to stop it, she couldn’t. She calmly walked with the crook, didn’t even balk at taking her gold jewelery off. Now she feels violated, like the crook
raped her mind or something of that sort. She can’t understand how she couldn’t
defend herself, from seemingly nothing, some words and a hand grab in under a
minute.

But my point is that crooks that use hypnotism should be publicized more, to
let the public know, and hopefully learn how to protect against it. I think a large
amount of victims don’t report it because they, like my wife, feel it was their fault
for “being stupid” when they were really helpless. While telling her friends about
this, she found one that was also robbed the same way. Her friend cashed a
Western Union check for a fairly large chunk of cash, the crook approached her
as she left the WU office, hand grab again, then commands her to walk to a less
crowded area and commands her to give crook all the cash, which she helplessly
did.
So now I search for a defense against this sort of attack that is most sinister to
people since it can happen in broad daylight right in front of friends and family
making you feel unsafe even in your own shop/neighborhood. I read that if you
learn to do hypnosis, a crook can no longer do it to you. Is this true? If so, you
know a good book to learn it from? H