In 2012, the Bank was unfortunately indicted by New York County District Attorney’s office on various charges relating to mortgage fraud. The mission of the Bank is also to serve the community.
#Abacus federal savings bank mortgage fraud pro#
In his career as an attorney and banker, he devoted countless hours to pro bono work for the Chinese community. In 1984, he founded the Abacus Federal Savings Bank which also owns Abacus Insurance Agency Corp and Abacus International Capital Corp.
His practice was largely concentrated on immigration and general law. He worked with several large corporations as an economic and financial analyst while attending law school at night and began his legal career in 1965 after graduating from Brooklyn Law School.
While attending university, he managed his family’s ranch until 1961 when he moved to New York. He earned a bachelor's and a master’s degree in agricultural economics in 1959 and continued his study in accounting and finance for two years at the University of Florida. His family briefly stayed in Brazil and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1952. He lived in Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War and moved to Hong Kong in 1948.
#Abacus federal savings bank mortgage fraud trial#
He paired that with audio reenactments based on the trial transcript.Thomas Sung was born in Shanghai in 1935. Unable to cover the trial with cameras or recording equipment, the director sent a courtroom illustrator to capture some of the action. If they're not quite so sympathetic as the Sungs, that begins with an astounding miscalculation: After indicting the Abacus employees, authorities chained them together and paraded them for a photo-op that even Vance calls "very unfortunate." Yet he's careful to present the government's case, and to include interviews with the DA, Cyrus Vance Jr., and the lead prosecutor, Polly Greenberg. James was introduced to the story by a friend of the Sungs, and spent most of his time with the family. Yu became the chief witness for the prosecution, and the trial process lasted five years. They reported their suspicions to banking regulators, and were rewarded with the indictments.
Thomas Sung even once halted a bank run with the aplomb of James Stewart's George Bailey.Ībacus' managers did eventually learn of Yu's activities, and fired him and two others. Shanghai-born but all-American, Thomas Sung is a devotee of It's a Wonderful Life, an affection James could hardly help but exploit. That includes Jill Sung and Vera Sung, the English-speaking, Connecticut-raised sisters who had inherited day-to-day operations from their father, one of the bank's founders. Also, Yu spoke a dialect that even most of his fellow Abacus employees didn't understand. His activities were hard to track, because, as the film explains, Chinatown residents are more likely to make cash transactions than the average American consumer. The problem was a loan officer, Ken Yu, who asked borrowers for bribes and falsified income statements for mortgage applications. In fact, the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country. The Chinatown-based bank also didn't package its mortgages into the sort of financial instruments that made The Big Short's machinations so arcane. It should engross most viewers, even those who've resisted learning what a subprime mortgage is.Īs it happens, Abacus didn't deal in subprime. That's because his Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a compelling non-fiction thriller. The case was little covered at the time, and while its outcome is a matter of public record, James prefers that reviewers not reveal whether the verdict was guilty, innocent, or mixed. In May 2012, New York's district attorney brought charges against Abacus Federal Savings Bank and 19 of its employees. Hoop Dreams director Steve James is here to say that's not true. Vera Sung, Jill Sung, and Thomas Sung in Abacus: Too Small To Jail.įrom the pages of sober financial journals to Hollywood's slapstick-econ adaptation of The Big Short, commentators often note that no American banks were indicted in the wake of the 2008 financial cave-in.
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