Salami Techniques

Salami techniques involve the theft of small amounts of assets from a large number of sources without noticeably reducing the whole.

In a banking system, the amount of interest to be credited to an account is rounded off. Instead of rounding off the number, that fraction of it is credited to a special account owned by the perpetrator.

Typically this is used when sequential processing occurs and each account is processed with the fractions added to the special account.

This got its name from the slicing of small amounts from the accounts like a salami sausage. The original perpetrator was only caught because the Bank held a competition for the first and last alphabetical account holder in the bank (i.e. a name beginning with 'aa' and a name beginning with 'zz'. The programmer had used the last account to be processed for the storage of the salami additions and the account name stated 'zz'. This account was chosen and then the owner could not be found so it was investigated and the fraud came to light.