Reading the full paragraph about Reissfelder makes it sound like a great deal of social engineering went on: > A few months later, Reissfelder, a laid-back Ger

Reading the full paragraph about Reissfelder makes it sound like a great deal of social engineering went on: > A few months later, Reissfelder, a laid-back German coder living near San Francisco, sold his travel startup to Expedia for $85 million. He was 33, and with his cut, he was looking forward to traveling the world with his fiancée. That made Reissfelder the perfect target: newly rich, financially inexperienced, and distracted. The same people who had introduced Gaglio to the Benedeks—a network of tax lawyers called the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners, or STEP—set him up with Reissfelder. Gaglio quickly formed an emotional connection. When Reissfelder said he wanted to lose weight, Gaglio forwarded photos of himself as a pudgy youth. Before long, Gaglio was signing his daily texts and emails with “Bises”—kisses. “In my mind, I’m thinking the familiarity was weird—but they’re French, you know?” Reissfelder says. “When he started suggesting investments, I said no, but he was so insistent, and I kind of felt obliged.” Reissfelder even ended up inviting Gaglio to his wedding in the Cayman Islands. It sounds like it was a slow burn leading up to suggesting that Reissfelder invest money with Gaglio.