Among the charges were conspiracy, grand larceny and falsifying business records.įacing indictment and the threat of long prison sentences, eight Abacus loan department employees entered guilty pleas and agreed to cooperate with the district attorney’s investigation.īut this June, after a 19-week trial, a Manhattan jury exonerated the bank and two top officials, Yiu Wah Wong, its former chief credit officer, and Raymond Tam, former supervisor of loan origination. Prosecutors cited 31 loans ranging from $80,000 to $700,000 and issued from May 2005 through February 2010. Vance Jr., Manhattan district attorney, said Abacus participated in “a systematic and pervasive mortgage fraud scheme” that resulted in the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent loans to Fannie Mae, the national mortgage security packager. In announcing the 184-count indictment against the bank and 11 former employees, Cyrus R. This is a different story, of a powerful prosecutor relentlessly pursuing a speck of a bank that for 31 years has prudently served an immigrant community in New York City. Much has been written about the failure of state and federal prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against mighty institutions and high-ranking figures after the 2008 financial crisis. Yet by May 2012 Abacus was under indictment by a grand jury in New York State Supreme Court. But it was only the beginning of a five-and-a-half-year odyssey through the New York State criminal justice system for the Sung family and the community lender the family had built from nothing.īank officials uncovered the fraud, fired the mastermind, investigated and reported it to regulators and provided New York State prosecutors with over 900,000 pages of documents. The discovery put an end to the scheme at Abacus. Sung had stumbled on a fraudulent scheme involving false borrower income verifications and documentation. Sung grew suspicious and called off the deal.Īlthough she didn’t know it immediately, Ms. Yu, she saw him outside the office talking furtively with the borrower. Yu, requesting that he come to the closing office to explain what the checks were for.
Ken Yu, the loan officer handling the mortgage, had asked that extra checks be made out to the borrower. After all, while many larger institutions had pulled back from residential lending after the financial crisis, Abacus was keeping its loan spigot open.īut as the paperwork was being completed, Ms. Only one set of papers still required signatures.Įight mortgage loans had been scheduled for closing that day in mid-December 2009, and Vera Sung - a director at Abacus Bank and a daughter of Thomas Sung, its immigrant founder - was on hand. All had gone smoothly: identifications verified, documents signed, checks exchanged. 12, 2017.In the heart of New York’s Chinatown, a mortgage closing at the Abacus Federal Savings Bank was just about complete. Vance Jr., Chanterelle Sung, Polly Greenberg. With: Thomas Sung, Jill Sung, Vera Sung, Heather Sung, David Lindorf, Cyrus R. WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), broadcaster.
Independent Television Service, broadcaster. Subtitled for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH).ĭirector of photography, Tom Bergmann editors, John Farbrother, David E. : PBS Distribution, Įnglish or Chinese dialogue subtitles in English or Mandarin.ġ videodisc (approximately 90 min.) : sound, colour with 1 black and white sequence 4 3/4 in.ĭirected by Steve James produced by Mark Mitten, Julie Goldman a Mitten Media, Motto Pictures and Kartemquin Films production for WGBH/Frontline and Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with Blue Ice Docs.
JILL SUNG ABACUS FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK FULL
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