![]() ![]() Each document posted on the site includes a link to theĬorresponding official PDF file on. The documents posted on this site are XML renditions of published Federal Register, and does not replace the official print version or the official It is not an official legal edition of the Federal “It’s about exonerating the whole community.This site displays a prototype of a “Web 2.0” version of the dailyįederal Register. “It’s more than Abacus bank being cleared,” says Sung. A happy ending, like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But the Sung family fought and won its case in 2015 (no spoiler here). His family and the community’s trust in the American banking and legal system was shaken by the ordeal. “The trust starts here, at the safe deposit box,” he says He explains that immigrants who come here live in tight quarters with one another and have nowhere else to keep their money safe. It’s a David and Goliath story, and a window into the miscarriage of justice during the most damaging economic crisis of the century.Įarly in the film, Sung stands amid rows of safe deposit boxes at his bank - 8,000 boxes to be exact. You don’t need to understand the subprime mortgage meltdown of the last decade to become invested in this film. He likens going after Abacus, especially when big banks had inflicted trillions of dollars in damage to the economy and their customers, as a waste of resources, small potatoes, the equivalent of arresting someone for jaywalking. And, as one expert explains in the film, fraud is where loans are sold with little to no chance of them being paid. The irony is that Abacus has one of the nation’s lowest default rates on its loans. instead insisted they accept a felony plea because, the lawyer says, “they wanted a conviction.” It was a spectacle that veterans of the banking, legal and law enforcement system had never seen before.Īn attorney for Sung says his client wasn’t offered the same chance the big banks were - to pay a fine. And in a media circus moment, law enforcement paraded 15 employees of Abacus through a New York courthouse, handcuffed to one another, like a chain gang. leveled a 180-plus count indictment against the bank, including grand larceny. They brought their findings to law enforcement and began providing the documents needed to go after Yu. The Sungs say they knew nothing about his crimes until 2009, after a customer complained about missing money. The film explains that his actions went undetected by upper management and the Sungs because he spoke a different dialect than most of the bank’s employees, and many of the transactions were in cash. He took bribes from borrowers, falsified mortgage applications and laundered money and was eventually sentenced for his crimes. The problem stemmed from loan officer Ken Yu. Cyrus Vance says Abacus was not singled out because it was easier prey than the big banks but because of fraudulent activity over a number of years. Footage of small businesses and entrepreneurs around Chinatown show the Sungs’ past, current and potential clientele - the vegetable vendor, the shoe repairman, the duck noodle restaurant owner, the nail lady at the beauty salon. “Abacus” focuses as much on the case as the effect it had on the tightknit family and the Chinese immigrant community. The 90-minute film follows Sung, now in his 80s, his wife and his four daughters for a year as they go to trial, fighting to exonerate the bank and their reputation. “If you wanted a bank to pick on, a family-owned one between a couple of noodle shops in Chinatown is the one to pick,” says journalist Matt Taibbi, who wrote about the subprime mortgage scandal in his book “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.” He’s interviewed here along with jurors, district attorney prosecutors, defense lawyers, other financial journalists and the Sung family. Those loans, among other factors, led to the financial meltdown of 2008 and the devastating recession.īut behemoths such as Citigroup, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were too big to fail, explains the film, so authorities targeted Abacus, a bank that was small enough to jail. Prosecutors needed to indict someone following the subprime mortgage meltdown, when $4.8 trillion worth of fraudulent loans were issued by U.S. Directed by Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself”), the documentary contends that Sung and his American-born daughters, who now run the bank, were unfairly targeted by the New York County D.A.’s office. ![]()
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