![]() They were appalled to see that there were some irregularities going on," James commented. "I think the Sungs were appalled to find out what was doing. But it was the bank itself that uncovered the fraud, and essentially invited police to investigate. ![]() The bank conceded fraud had been committed by a loan officer who doctored mortgage applications to qualify borrowers. The Abacus case had more gray in it than an AARP convention. Steve James, director of ABACUS: Small Enough to Jail Abacus, a small Chinese American family-run bank, becomes the only US bank that. Steve James' new documentary ABACUS: Small Enough to Jail, tells the story of that prosecution and the Sung family, owners of the bank, who squared off against the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Specifically, those of Chinese descent have been. In fact, the only criminal indictment to come out of the financial disaster hit Abacus, a bank catering to the Chinese immigrant community in New York, that - compared to a Wells-Fargo or Citigroup - was microscopic. Finally, Abacus illustrates the importance of informal and flexible lending practices to bringing the unbanked and underbanked members of racial and ethnic minorities into the formal market for financial services and credit, a notion known as the democratization of credit. They got a pass for being "too big to fail." Yet none of the major banking institutions at the center of it - Wells-Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup among them - ever faced criminal prosecution. (The flip side of the banks that were too big to fail, the journalist Matt Taibbi says in the film, is this bank, which was ‘small enough to jail.’) The documentary also shows how Abacus had played an important role as a neighborhood banker in an immigrant community.The 2008 financial crisis proved nearly catastrophic to the American economy. The prosecution was, in its view, an arrogant waste of resources and possibly an act of scapegoating. Vance Jr., the district attorney who oversaw the case, called the accusations of cultural bias ‘entirely misplaced and entirely wrong.’ The film persuasively argues that any fraud at Abacus occurred at a low level, and that the bank dealt with it swiftly and properly. The two perpetrators, Kamare Lewis and Kevin Spencer, pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide and second-degree sexual assault in 2023. bank indicted for mortgage fraud related to the 2008 crisis.’ Was the government giving a pass to big fish and picking on a small one - perhaps with a tinge of racism in its motives? Cyrus R. Ee Lee (1984 September 19, 2020) was an Asian-American woman who was raped and murdered by two black teenagers in a racially-motivated 3 daylight attack in Milwaukee. But two-and-a-half years later, the bank was accused of mortgage fraud by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office making Abacus Federal Savings the only U.S. Abacus was, a title card at the end asserts, ‘the only U.S. The bank became a community hub, but in 2012, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged it with mortgage fraud, also indicting 19 of its former employees. A family-run bank that has served New Yorks Chinatown for over three decades. bank indicted for mortgage fraud related to the 2008 GFC. Recently, the military quickly appeared at major demonstrations. Abacus Federal Savings Bank which complied with all legal obligations, was the only U.S. “Born in Shanghai, Thomas Sung founded the Abacus Federal Savings Bank in Chinatown in 1984, hoping to make it easier for s Chinese immigrants to get loans. racist anti-Arab hype but now it is just as often the enemy within: the Eugene. Abacus: Small Enough To Jail (Steve James, 2016, 88 min., USA)
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