by Trin Denise
Sydney laughed. “I promise as soon as I drop off my briefcase, the first thing I will do is go to her office.”
“Thank you sweet Jesus of vast mother earth,” Karen said with a mock salute.
“By the way, I love the new haircut. The skull and crossbones on your boots are a nice touch, too,” Sydney said over her shoulder as she stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the fifth floor.
“Oh great payer of paychecks, that compliment means more to me than you’ll ever know,” Karen yelled just as the elevator door closed.
Sydney laughed at Karen’s over the top theatrics. She had been right about the leather miniskirt and boots. Karen Lauder was something else. She had been the main receptionist at Welsh for the last seven years and attended college in the evenings. She only had one semester left before she received her B.A.S. in Computer Programming with a minor in Business Management. Sydney’s gift to her would be a promotion to high-level management on the day she graduated.
The elevator door opened and Sydney stepped out onto plush burgundy colored carpet. She glanced up and down the empty hallway that Karen had so lovingly nicknamed Executive Boulevard. She called it that because the fifth floor was filled with spacious conference rooms and offices that housed all of the Welsh Executives and their assistants.
Her office sat at the far end with a conference room on one side and Maureen, her assistant’s office on the other. With luck, she would make it to her office without being accosted by an executive who thought their problems required her immediate attention. Her first order of business of the day would be with Caitlyn, followed by her meeting with Bill Amos. Depending on how her meetings went, she just might take the rest of the day off.
She walked into her office and kicked the door shut with her foot. She let out a sigh of relief and tossed her briefcase on the desk. She took off her black leather jacket, slung it over the back of her chair, and pushed the sleeves up on her sweater.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air. She silently thanked Maureen for having the coffee ready. She poured herself a cup, added four packs of sugar, some cream, and took it back to her desk. She dropped down onto her chair with a thud. She glanced at the stack of messages piled up near the phone and decided to look at them later. They couldn’t be too important or Maureen would have said something when Sydney had called to have her pack Anne’s things.
She glanced around the festive looking room. Maureen always decorated her office for the holidays. It didn’t matter whether it was Halloween or Easter and Christmas was no different. Maureen had placed Poinsettia plants on either side of the gas fireplace at the far corner of the room. Christmas lights were strung around the floor to ceiling bookcases and lighted candles had been placed on all four windowsills.
Sydney took a sip of coffee and leaned back in her chair. Her thoughts turned to Caitlyn Ashburn, her protégé as Karen had called her. Caitlyn was only nineteen years old and made almost as much money as her executives. Sydney knew that it had ticked off certain employees when Caitlyn came to work at Welsh but she didn’t care. Caitlyn was a prodigy and had more intelligence than all of her executives combined.
When Caitlyn walked into Welsh Enterprises, it was the first time Sydney had seen her in thirteen years. The last time was when Caitlyn was just six-years-old. She had been a little concerned given Caitlyn’s level of intelligence that she might have remembered her. When it was apparent that she hadn’t, Sydney was more than relieved.
Since the age of eight, Sydney had kept an eye on Caitlyn and received weekly updates on the girl’s progress. By the age of ten, it was obvious that Caitlyn possessed the intelligence of a graduate student. By the age of fifteen, she had graduated from high school and by the age of seventeen, she had completed her Masters degree in Computer Science as well as a Masters degree in Business Management. In less than three months, she would have her Doctorate.
It was at the age of seventeen that Sydney had sent two of her top executives to approach Caitlyn and her parents with a job offer. She would be assigned to work in the IT department and would be reporting directly to Welsh’s CEO.
Caitlyn of course was thrilled, as was her adopted stepfather, Edward Ashburn who Sydney suspected only saw dollar signs. Caitlyn’s mother however, had some reservations.
Although Caitlyn was above intelligence, to her mother, she was still her little girl. In the end, Rachel had conceded and Caitlyn had joined Welsh much to Sydney’s relief. Having Caitlyn work at Welsh was an integral part to the success of Sydney’s grand plan. Without Caitlyn, there would have been no plan at all.
Sydney pushed away from the desk. She refilled her coffee, grabbed a pen and notebook, and left the office. She didn’t have to go far. Caitlyn’s office sat directly across the hall from hers. She rapped lightly on the door with her knuckles, pushed it open, and poked her head in.
Caitlyn had been oblivious to the knock on the door and Sydney watched for several minutes as the young woman continued to tap away on her keyboard. No matter how many times Sydney saw Caitlyn; she was taken aback by the young woman’s beauty. To say she looked like her mother would be an understatement. Caitlyn was the spitting image of Rachel. The two women looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Rachel was slightly taller and Caitlyn wore her hair a little longer but they had the same strong jaw line, same shaped face, and bright blue penetrating eyes that sparkled when they laughed.
Caitlyn looked up. Her face instantly lit up at seeing Sydney.
“Good morning. Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Sydney smiled.
“And good morning to you, too,” Caitlyn grinned. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”
Sydney stepped into the office and shut the door. “I think I do,” she laughed.
Caitlyn frowned. “How long were you standing there?”
Sydney grabbed a chair and slid it over next to the desk by Caitlyn. “Not long,” she answered, dropping down into the chair. She laid the pen and notebook on the edge of the desk. “You looked so intent. I didn’t wanna bother you.”
“You are the only person besides my mom who I would never classify as a bother.”
“I think that may have been a compliment,” Sydney said with a chuckle.
“It was.”
For the first time since Sydney came into Caitlyn’s office, she took notice of the young woman’s attire. The Bob Marley t-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers were in stark contrast to Caitlyn’s normally ultra conservative three-piece suit and heels. On rare occasions, Sydney would see her in pleated slacks and a blazer. “Uh, Caitlyn … how long have you been here?”
“It will be two years in February. Why do you ask?”
Sydney laughed. “I don’t mean your hire date. I meant the last twenty-four hours,” Sydney said, nodding at Caitlyn’s clothes.
“Oh,” Caitlyn said, glancing down at her t-shirt and jeans. It was obvious that Caitlyn had been so preoccupied with what she was working on that she hadn’t realized how she was dressed. “Since nine … um, yesterday evening,” she said almost apologetically. “I went home but I couldn’t stop thinking about the software code so I decided to come back in. I guess I didn’t realize how long I had been here. I can go change. I keep extra clothes in the closet.”
“That’s not necessary. You look fine dressed the way you are and besides, I like Bob Marley,” Sydney laughed.
“It used to be my mom’s.”
Visions of Rachel’s firm breasts straining against the t-shirt flashed through Sydney’s mind. She shook her head to dispel the image. “Okay, tell me what’s going on.”
“This missing money has got me stumped,” Caitlyn sighed. “Well, actually that’s not true. I’m not stumped. I know how they did it but I’m having trouble figuring out who did it and it’s making me a little more than nuts.”
Sydney knew by the furrowing of Caitlyn’s brows that she was frustrated and that was something that did not happen often, actually, i
t never happened. She couldn’t think of one instance where she had seen Caitlyn unnerved or upset. It just did not happen. “Okay, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me exactly what you’ve found, how you found it, and then we can go from there.”
“What do you know about the Salami Technique?”
Sydney didn’t know what she expected Caitlyn to say first but salami fit nowhere in the equation. She pretended to think about it for a few seconds and then said, “I like mine on a hoagie bun with provolone, tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, and lightly baked.”
Caitlyn laughed a deep belly laugh, showing straight white teeth. “That’s not the salami I’m talking about.”
“I kinda figured that,” Sydney said with a wink.
“Okay, how about I give you a little history first and then I will explain how it’s being used to embezzle money from our client accounts.”
Sydney leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs at the ankle, and smiled. “I’m all ears,” she said, lacing her fingers behind her head.
“It all started with the banking industry and the advent of computers. When the banks went from manual bookkeeping and converted to computerized systems they unwittingly opened a very large door to a form of embezzlement that beforehand had been impossible to pull off, which is now known as the Salami Technique.”
Caitlyn got up from her chair and walked over to the coffee maker sitting on a small table in the corner. She poured herself a cup and turned to Sydney. “Would you like a warm up?” she asked.
“Since when did you start drinking coffee, and yes I would like a warm up, thank you.”
Caitlyn glanced at her wristwatch. “Almost six days ago,” she said as she poured coffee into Sydney’s mug.
“See what happens? I go out of town for six days, everything falls apart, and you become a java junkie,” Sydney said, grinning as she took a sip of the steaming liquid.
“Just means you are too valuable to leave us,” Caitlyn laughed as she sat back down in her chair. “So the Salami Technique got its name after a bank employee who also happened to be a computer programmer accumulated a large amount of money. He averted any suspicion by not taking large amounts of money at one time; instead, he sliced off thin quantities of cash from thousands of customer accounts. He then redirected that cash into an account that he had full control over. The analogy is that he shaved money from customer accounts like a butcher would shave pieces of salami to make a sandwich.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far. How did he do it?”
“He wrote a program that would randomly transfer thirty to forty cents from several thousand customers’ checking accounts into the account he controlled. Over a couple of years, you can imagine how much money he had stockpiled. I think by the time he was caught it was estimated that he had stolen over three-million dollars.
“Why did it take so long to catch him?” Sydney asked.
“No one complained. The amounts he took were so small that most customers never bothered to report that they had thirty to forty cent discrepancies on their statements. He had also been smart enough to never take money out of a customer’s account more than three times a year.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Sydney said, shaking her head.
“Well think about it. Would you go into your bank and make a fuss if you were missing thirty cents?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Sydney admitted.
“And that’s what made him successful. He was banking on that exact assumption.”
“So, how did he get caught then?”
Caitlyn smiled. “Well it seems there was one old man who had grown up during the great depression and he was not happy that the bank had cheated him out of seventy cents over the course of one year. He went into the bank and threw what one would describe as a temper tantrum until the bank was forced to look at it.”
“And that’s how they caught the guy?”
“Yep and the old man got his seventy cents back as well as free checking for the rest of his life.”
Sydney chuckled. “How common is this problem?” she asked.
“More common than you would think. Several movies have been made about it. You’ve probably heard of them, Superman III, Hackers, and Office Space just to name a few.”
Sydney nodded. “I have seen all of those movies but I had no idea that what they were doing actually had a name for it.”
“I will give you an example of how easy it is to pull something off like this if you know what you are doing. Between 2007 and 2008, a 22 year-old Plumas Lake, California man named Michael Largent used the Salami Technique to accrue $50,000 in funds from the two brokering houses, E-trade and Charles Schwab and Co. He then used it to get another $8,000 from Google checkout.
“How is that possible?”
“When you open an account with any of those companies, you have to provide your checking account number as well as the banks routing number. The companies then make a small monetary deposit into your account. It can be as little as one penny and as high as two-dollars. You the customer, then have to go back to the company’s web site and enter the amount deposited into your account in order to verify yourself and open an account with them. PayPal is another company who has the same verification process using a debit or credit card.
Sydney got up from her chair and refilled her coffee cup. She brought the pot over and topped off Caitlyn’s cup.
“Thank you,” Caitlyn said, taking a sip. “So, in order to pull it off, Largent took advantage of a logic flaw in the computer programming. He designed an automated script program that set up 58,000 fake accounts and when the companies like E-trade deposited the funds, Largent then transferred the money into his own account.”
“How’d he get caught?” Sydney asked.
“The brokerage houses discovered it and contacted the authorities and that’s when the United States Secret Service and the FBI got involved. Now the kicker here is that Largent did not do anything illegal, at least not in theory by setting up the accounts. None of the companies involved specified any limitations on how many accounts a customer could open but the Department of Justice ended up charging him with fraud.”
Sydney frowned. “Okay, if what he did wasn’t illegal then how could they charge him for a crime?”
“The Assistant United States Attorney, Matthew D. Segal, who is a prosecutor in the office’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit or what’s known as C.H.I.P., claimed Largent used false names, driver’s license, etc. and that constituted fraud. I personally think his arrogance was his undoing. You see, some of the names he used were cartoon characters and comic book heroes.”
“Bugs Bunny opening an account would definitely raise a red flag,” Sydney laughed.
“In 2009 he pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and was sentenced to fifteen months in prison and ordered to pay $200,000 in restitution.”
“Did he say why he did it?”
“He wanted to pay off his credit card debt and he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, legally he wasn’t, but morally and ethically he was.”
“If he was that talented why would he waste his time doing something illegal?”
“That is the same question the judge asked before sentencing him. My guess is that it was an adrenaline rush, like pulling one over on big brother. If he had used real names, it’s hard to say how long he could have gotten away with it. Probably years, maybe forever.”
Sydney sat up in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees. “Okay, I think I have a pretty good idea now of what and how the Salami Technique works, so how does it all pertain to us?”
“I found the problem when I ran a beta test on the upgraded billing system program. When I loaded the programs, I created a mirror image of both systems so I could run them simultaneously for a step-by-step comparison. What I found was a discrepancy between the amount billed to our customer’s invoice and the amount our customer’s actually paid to Welsh.”
“If you’re tel
ling me that our customer’s were charged more than they should have been due to embezzlement, this could be a public relations nightmare. Our stock will go into the toilet,” Sydney said, shaking her head. This is the last thing she needed to deal with right now.
“The invoices that our customers received showed the correct amount they owed.”
“I don’t understand,” Sydney said, her brows furrowing.
“Someone with highly sophisticated programming skills accessed our billing system software and used a backdoor in the program to rewrite several lines of code. They set up several logic algorithms so that when a customer sent in their payment for the invoice and our customer service representative marked it as paid in the system, the program would kick in and round down to the nearest dollar. The change that was left over was then transferred into a separate account and the invoice billed in the system was automatically changed to reflect that amount. What they did, I mean the way they rewrote the program, is quite ingenious actually. I’ve never seen logic used in this fashion.”
“Probably because you don’t think like a thief,” Sydney teased. “Okay, just so I understand what you’re saying, let me give you an example and you tell me if I’m on the same page as you.”
“Shoot,” Caitlyn said, leaning back in her chair.
Sydney stood up from the chair. She paced slowly back and forth in front of Caitlyn’s desk. It was something she did whenever she was deep in thought. She stopped to look at Caitlyn. “I know we have different ways for customers to pay their invoices. Some do it over the phone and some have terms, and some send in checks, etcetera. For this example let’s say I’m Joe Blow and I get an invoice in the mail for $2,921.26. I call up Welsh to pay my bill over the phone with a credit card. Once the customer rep takes the payment and marks the invoice as paid, this rewritten program code kicks in and removes the twenty-six cents, changes the invoice in the system to reflect the amount as if the twenty-six cents never existed. The missing twenty-six cents is then rerouted into an unknown bank account. Is that correct?”