From left: Vera Sung, Jill Sung and Thomas Sung from ‘Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,’ a PBS Distribution release.
Steve James is the veteran director of Chicago-based documentaries “Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself,” “The Interrupters” and the forthcoming 10-part docu-series, “America to Me.” But his first Oscar nomination for best documentary has come with a film set in the Chinese immigrant community of New York.
James’s PBS Frontline film “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” follows the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, run by the Sung family, as it is indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on fraud charges connected to the 2008 financial crisis. The bank held one of the nation’s lowest default rates, and its founder, Thomas Sung, the family patriarch, subjected its loan practices to rigorous testing and standards.
But in 2009, a loan officer named Ken Yu was found to have falsified documents and accepted bribes by borrowers, setting off the Sungs’ suspicions. He was promptly fired, and the Sungs — Thomas’s daughters Jill and Vera help run the bank — reported the incident to Fannie Mae, referred the case to the FBI and hired an investigator to root out any more wrongdoing.
