![]() ![]() “Mark said, ‘Do you realize in the aftermath of 2008, you are the only institution that’s been indicted?’” Sung said. Mitten then suggested seeing if James, who he worked with on the acclaimed Roger Ebert documentary “Life Itself,” would be interested in making it into a movie. Vera was friends with producer Mark Mitten and would discuss the case with him. The employees indicted were put together in chains for a photo opportunity derided as insensitive. The result was that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office decided to indict Abacus itself, arguing the employees were high enough in the chain of command that the bank was legally responsible for their fraud. They fired the loan officer and two other employees, notified Fannie Mae and suggested the borrower report the incident to the police. ![]() Sung’s daughters and Abacus bank officials Jill and Vera Sung discovered their loan officer was allegedly committing fraud. Through lawyers and journalists including Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi and The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan, the film makes the case that since the larger banks involved in the financial crisis were “too big to fail,” Abacus was targeted because it was “small enough to jail” as a family owned bank primarily serving minorities. The film, which was picked up by PBS and a vailable for free streaming for Amazon Prime members, spans the bank’s indictment to the 2015 verdict. “Not only is it vindication of the quote-unquote crime that was allegedly committed by our institution, but it was also a vindication of the Chinese community because it was attacked,” Sung said. In an interview conducted at the Water Club condo complex where he lives, before leaving for the trip to Los Angeles for Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, Sung discussed the positive response to the film, including the gratifying Oscar nomination. The trial is the subject of the documentary “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” directed by “Hoop Dreams” filmmaker Steve James and nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar. bank criminally indicted in the 2008 financial crisis. Sung founded Abacus Federal Savings Bank, which caters to the Chinese-American community in New York City, and was the only U.S. Adding insult to injury, the case was based entirely on evidence which Abacus Bank had turned over to federal regulators, as required by law, after they discovered felonious behavior on the part of some of their loan officers, whom they fired on the spot.LONGBOAT KEY - Sarasota County will be represented at this year’s Academy Awards, with Longboat Key resident Thomas Sung among the star-filled audience Sunday to see if the film he appears in receives an Oscar. What’s stunning is that Abacus was the only financial institution that the government ever charged criminally after the collapse of the mortgage market. The world came crashing down around them when the bank - and 19 of its employees - were charged with conspiracy, larceny, and fraud in the wake of of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Abacus flourished over the years, and his daughters, Jill and Heather, joined the family business as executives after they became lawyers. He wanted to help the people of his community get loans after repeatedly witnessing how other lending institutions were willing take Chinese people’s deposits, but were reluctant to let them borrow money. ![]() ![]() Patriarch Thomas Sung was inspired by the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, when he and his family founded the Abacus Federal Savings Bank in 1984 in New York City’s Chinatown. A bacus: Small Enough to Jail is an Oscar-nominated documentary that chronicles an outrageous example of bigotry against the Sung’s Chinese American immigrant family. ![]()
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