Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016)

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

During the 2008 American financial crisis, everyone was looking for someone to blame for the swirling mess that led to many firings, foreclosures, and fearful descent in the economy. Banks were the biggest targets and deserved the scrutiny and distrust of the public for terrible decisions in money and loans. But only one bank faced criminal charges: Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York. And as this documentary reveals, it appears that they were only a small target meant to make an example of while the bigger banks faced lesser punishments. At the very least, the bigger banks didn’t have to be led out into public like a chain gang.

The Abacus bank has a rich history in Chinatown, having been run by the Chinese immigrant Sung family and becoming a financial staple of the Chinese sector of New York. But they would soon be charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. with fraud and undergo a five-year process that would shake the foundation of their business. If the other banks were too big to fail, Abacus was too small to save (or small enough to jail as the title implies).

The accusations arose from problems in their loan department. The charges included embezzlement, bribery, and larceny, brought about by dishonest people within the Sung family’s employment. This includes the co-founders of Thomas and Hwei Lin Sung, a married couple with four daughters. Not only did the co-founders fire these dirty employees but kept records of the dirty actions to make their case. But Vance, ever under the pressure to look tough on crime during a time when everyone wanted blood from the banks, still pushed the Sung family into a harsh light for prosecution. And for a re-election, he turned the Sung case into a media circus.

This circus included handcuffing the Abacus employees together and trotting them in public to make an example. In case you’re wondering, this is not normal behavior to have the accused assembled as a chain gang. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone called the image Stalinist and there’s something so frightening about this innocent family being drug through the mud while the bigger banks remain big and fully funded amid the storm. All of this for what turned out to be small mistakes by the Sungs misread and spun by others into one of full-blown conspiracy to cheat people out of their money.

Director Steve James keeps us firmly with the family and the struggles they face. It’s grueling to watch Thomas put an obscene amount of work into this never-ending case that his family starts worrying about his health. And yet he presses on because he knows if he doesn’t that the bank, his employees, and his family will be thrown into disarray, to say nothing of the Chinese community that relies on them. When the news initially breaks of the case, Abacus is flooded with customers trying to remove their funds, scared that Abacus will use even more shady tactics to screw more people out of their cash.

Abacus is tough to watch but an essential component about how the heat of a falling economy brings out the worst in people and those that work hard are tossed under the bus. It’s easy to get caught up in the fury of it all to not take a longer look at the Sung family and assume they did it. And with something as complicated and messy as the 2008 financial crash, we need all the perspective we can get to untangle this massive web of corruption.