I've known a number of self labeled "liberals" that basically think being progressive means simply not being openly racist and restraining from yelling slurs on a street corner.
Surprise surprise it turns out they were just closet bigots who were aware what crowds they could get away with expressing their horrid views with and in the recent years figured street corners are now perfectly up for grabs.
The best marks are the overconfident ones who think they will be able to out scam the scammers. They are the ones who will gladly dump their life savings into shitty ape pngs thinking they will be the one to make it big.
If a "good boss" is being an actual good boss, the worst they should have to expect from the union is having the occasional friendly meeting with them to discuss any minor workplace concerns and contract negotiations.
The fact many "good bosses" immediately start sprewing hell and brimstone at the mention of a union hints maybe they ain't as good and benevolent as they claim to be.
Government databases getting misused for personal motives is actually pretty common.
AP did a report on this back in 2016 and while public records on this are fairly limited, they still found about 300 cases of database abuse from 2013 through 2015.
"Those insidious trans trying to trick people into sleeping with them! They just don't have any respect for people's body autonomy.
Now anyways, time for me to drug random women without their consent."
Thousands might be being murdered a day in death camps but at least the shareholders are happy.
90% of his advice is pretty much just boilerplate self help stuff you can find in thousands of books on Amazon. That stuff gets you in the door and is meant to develop a sense of trust because you might see initial improvement and feel good from the advice.
It's when he does the rug pull and starts introducing trad nonsense into it that determines how willing a person is to keep following through on listening to him.
Like you mentioned, this is an extremely common tactic used by religious leaders as well as cults. Back in the mid 20th century when the whole self help craze started, many cults took to framing themselves as self help groups to attract outsiders. NXIVM is probably the most infamous example of this. The first few meetings should seem like a normal support group but would soon start ramping up into full on cult mode.