![]() ![]() The offenses included embezzlement, bribery and larceny. But woven around that is a story of immigrants assimilating and obeying the laws of their home country over generations, only to be made an example by their adopted nation's power structure for what seem, in James' account, like specious or intellectually dishonest reasons.Īs the film explains, no one in the Sung family-including bank co-founders and married couple Thomas and Hwei Lin Sung and their four daughters-was directly connected to the shenanigans in the loan department of their Chinatown bank. The main object of interest is the 2015 trial of Abacus bank officials on charges of conspiracy, larceny and systemic fraud. James, whose distinguished career includes " Hoop Dreams," "At the Death House Door" and the recent Roger Ebert documentary " Life Itself," has a knack for finding the universal within the specific, and often a much larger and more complex story nestled within a specific account of one event. It's owned and run by the Sung family, Chinese-Americans who live in Greenwich, Connecticut and commute to Manhattan to oversee the flow of funds, the distribution of loans, the collection of payments and so forth. The titular bank is named for the Chinese calculator. Yiu Wah Wong, the bank's chief credit officer, and Wai Hung "Raymond" Tam, the loan origination supervisor, were both acquitted on Wednesday.But if you're a small, family-owned bank in Chinatown, well, it's a different story. But in Abacus's closing arguments, Puvalowski called the state's case "a bizarro prosecution." The bank has one of the lowest default rates in the country, the attorney said, citing a rate of about 0.3 percent versus a nationwide average of 6.6 percent, 20 times higher. "We can't discover the falsity underlying these loan documents and then sit around, waiting for a mortgage awarded based on them to stop performing," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Rachel Hochhauser told the jury in her summations. Prosecutors claimed the defective loans misrepresented the applicants' credit, employment, income and source of down payments. The charges against Abacus and its executives stemmed from the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of allegedly fraudulent loans to Fannie Mae between 20. "The unanswered question is why should this small minority bank be singled out for prosecution relating to the financial crisis of 2008," Thomas Sung, founder and chief executive officer of Abacus, said in a statement after the verdict. "While today's verdict is disappointing, we are confident that, as a result of this prosecution and enhanced supervision," the fraud has been terminated, Vollero said in a statement. Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's office that prosecuted the case, noted that eight people from the bank's loan department had pleaded guilty. "Right case, wrong bank," Abacus attorney Kevin Puvalowski told Reuters after the verdict. ![]() Its loans are still performing, with monthly mortgage payments being made by borrowers. Unlike other banks, however, Abacus' loans did not have a high default rate. Abacus is believed to be the only bank to face a criminal trial in the United States on charges of mortgage fraud in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The executives and the bank each faced about 80 counts. The jury also found two executives at the bank not guilty of charges against them on Wednesday. A day earlier, the jury acquitted the bank of conspiracy and grand larceny charges. A jury in New York state court in Manhattan acquitted the bank of mortgage fraud and falsifying business records after a three-month trial, prosecutors and defense counsel said. By Karen Freifeld NEW YORK (Reuters) - Abacus Federal Savings Bank, which caters to the Chinese-American community in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was found not guilty on Thursday of all charges related to the sale of allegedly fraudulent mortgages to Fannie Mae. ![]()
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