Salami Slicing

In finance, the term “salami slicing” refers to the process of misappropriating extremely small amounts of assets so as to go unnoticed. Typically, salami slicing schemes operate over long periods of time. The term normally carries a negative or illicit connotation.

Example:

A fraudulent financial services provider may round off transactions by a fraction of a centime and place the trimmed-off money into a separate account.

With hundreds of thousands or even millions of transactions being made by the financial services provider every day, the fractional centimes which are appropriated when rounding could add up to a millions of Swiss francs every year.

However, because only a fraction of a centime is taken off each transacted amount, the removal goes unnoticed by customers.