Salami Technique as an Organized Crime: Examining the Modus Operandi and Possible Solutions

Adebimpe Saheed Fagbemi; Ph.D.; Mudassir Nasir; Ph.D.; Muhammad Sani Idris Doctoral Candidate

doi:10.56201/jhsp.vol.12.no8.2026.pg116.127

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Salami Technique as an Organized Crime: Examining the Modus Operandi and Possible Solutions

Adebimpe Saheed Fagbemi, Ph.D., Mudassir Nasir, Ph.D., Muhammad Sani Idris Doctoral Candidate

Abstract

This paper examines the salami technique from a criminological, technological, legislative, and regulatory perspective. It distinguishes the technique itself from the broader legal concept of organised crime and argues that salami technique should be regarded as an organised-crime, when it’s deliberately employed by a structured or sustained criminal network to generate illicit financial or material benefit. This study observes the principal characteristics of the technique, including incremental exploitation, automation, concealment, repetition, insider abuse, technological manipulation, distributed victimisation, and the aggregation of individually minor losses. It further analyses why conventional fraud-detection mechanisms could fail to identify such schemes and proposes a multidimensional response involving stronger internal controls, continuous transaction monitoring, anomaly detection, independent audits, insider-risk management, forensic studies, whistleblowing mechanisms, interagency cooperation, digital- forensic capacity, and appropriate legal frameworks. This research was anchored on Rational Choice Theory and secondary data to validate the findings. The study concludes that combating salami fraud requires a shift from transaction-level detection to pattern-level and network-level JHSP JHSP P-ISSN 2695 2416 detection, because the criminal significance of the technique lies not necessarily in the individual “slice,” but in the cumulative and coordinated pattern. The findings of this paper revealed that insiders and dishonest employees worked together to perpetrate this unholy act. Hence, this paper concluded that government should established centralised data base, synergy amongst security and anti-graft agencies in curbing this illicit act known as Salami technique.

Keywords

CybercrimeDigital forensicsFraud detectionOrganised crimeSalam Technique.

References

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Salami Technique as an Organized Crime: Examining the Modus Operandi and Possible Solutions

Abstract

Keywords

References

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