I only got one thought when I watched this film: Suppose your family didn't have that 10 million dollars, or suppose you've only got 8 millions, could you still afford to continue the lawsuit against the American bureaucratic system? Or suppose you didn't have enough financial backbone and your pocket was not deep enough, did it mean that you guys would still have been jailed? So this also means that if don't have enough money to fight in the court, you would have to plead guilty in the end, the injustice would never be overturned? So even you've been exonerated and proved to be innocent, what's next?

UNBELIEVABLE! I have never written a review but feel compelled to by the emotional response and anger this documentary has stirred. It is a well-done documentary, and I guess I am just shocked by its content. I have studied the 2008 financial crisis extensively. I had no idea this happened. The US government and the New York DA's office should be absolutely ashamed. The fact that this happened makes me disappointed in my government. Part of me is holding some hope that the documentary is extremely biased and one sided (though I do not believe this is true). It makes me physically ill to think that the large financial institutions such as Citi Group, Bank of America, JP Morgan, etc., got away with what they did in causing the financial crisis and our government spent its resources persecuting this small family run community bank. Unbelievable.

This movie is about a community savings bank in NYC servicing the Chinese immigrant community.The Bank had a deposit run in 2003 after news broke that a rogue employee had stolen money from the bank, and that run nearly closed the bank and required millions in expenses to fix. Likely as a result of the losses, the bank needed to find offsetting income and focused on real estate lending and then selling loans made to Fannie Mae. The Bank made good income on such activities beginning in 2009.At most community banks including Abacus, commissions are paid to lower and mid-level loan officers of the bank to find loans which are profitable to the bank when sold, but unfortunately some greedy and unscrupulous or lowly scrupulous loan officers will coach loan applicants on how to game the system to obtain a loan that they do not qualify. At Abacus, rogue loan officers did exactly that by coaching loan applicants how to lie on applications whether by false income or collateral.It is the responsibility of the independent underwriting team at the Bank to check and double check those facts. In this movie, the prosecution tries show that the Bank and senior officers were complicit in making fraudulent loans by not catching the false applications. The trial lasted more than 2 months with witness after witness admitting the information in their application was false though not always with the help of the lower bank officer. So the question was should the bank and higher officers be found guilty of fraud for not catching this. I believe the jury reached the correct verdict, though neither the Sungs nor the DA should be in the clear for noncriminal wrongdoing. The DA for being too ambitious to make a big name for himself and the Sungs for not being more vigilant in their pursuit of the gold. The trial cost the bank and Sungs millions, and as a result the Bank entered a formal agreement with the OCC to improve profitability after losses related to the trial costs. It was interesting that Jill Sung, President did not testify in the trial and that she works in a Chinese bank not being able to speak Chinese. Mrs. Sung was right that banking should have been left to others.

Very well-done documentary about small (2,651st largest bank in the U.S. at the time) family bank in Chinatown New York prosecuted for financial crimes after 2008, has interviews with all the major players (bank employees/owners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors, audio from witnesses, etc.)Absolutely head-scratching as to why the D.A. thought this was a good place to satisfy public outrage over the Great Recession (politics and racism are hinted at but not fully explored). (I do wish this angle has been pursued in more depth.)Basic plot: low-level employees are fleecing home buyers into giving them cash fees and then falsifying their loan applications so they get approved by higher-ups, the government decides this is evidence of a systematic conspiracy and tries to go after the bank itself (this despite it having an extremely low default rate, which makes it strange that Fannie Mae is named the defendant in the case because overall it got much more money from this bank proportionally than from thousands of others, particularly the giant ones who not only didn't get prosecuted but actually got bailouts (courtesy of you and me)).Also shows incredible scenes such as the bank employees shackled together in a chain gang and paraded into the courthouse in front of news cameras (which by all accounts is an unheard-of practice nowadays); the Manhattan D.A. (Cyrus Vance Jr.) and one of his underlings ("Polly Greenberg" iirc) are both masterful in denying any kind of prejudicial motivation in selecting and prosecuting Abacus (the case took five years and cost taxpayers ten million USD and resulted in *zero* convictions).Anyone need anymore evidence that giant corporations run this country? Anyone?