This is one crazy story. A prank caller called a McDonald's pretending to be a police officer. He gave a vague description of a staff member who had supposedly stolen a purse from a customer. The deputy manager called in a girl who matched the description, and then she, along with her fiancé, complied with all of the sick whims of the prank caller. The caller was eventually caught, but the actual physical torturers claimed they were just 'following the orders' of a police officer.

This story appears to confirm the findings of the famous Milgram experiment, where participants were found to be willing to administer lethal electrical shocks to strangers after merely being ordered to do so. A large number of humans are clueless automatons, lacking rationality, and that's something you need to remember when dealing with the public at large. Many people are easy to program and control (as proven by Derren Brown), and the people who can do that without resorting to illegal acts have a lot of power in their hands.