There's plenty of material to read on social engineering. People who get good at this stuff can pass themselves off as anything they want to gain access to all kinds of stuff. If you ever watch Darren Brown's stuff on the Internet, he applies these techniques to get people to do things that are quite bizarre.
The more intelligent psychopaths are masters at manipulation, since they are natural psychologists: astute observers of human behavior without any of their own hangups or fears to exploit or give them away. Just rock steady at whatever they want you to believe they are, they have a reptile's serenity and calmness when they con people into believing whatever they want them to believe, because they appear to be so sure of themselves and without doubt when they are lying and deceiving.
Taking advantage of people's natural inclination to obey someone who presents themselves in positions of authority is what's going on here. Obey the Alpha, there's something even biologically wired into people to do that.