Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

In 1984, the Abacus Federal Savings Bank was founded by Thomas Sung, a Shanghai-born lawyer who wanted to give something back to the Chinatown community. The movie opens with the courtly and dapper Sung, now 80, and his wife watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on television, as Sung explains his powerful identification with James Stewart’s George Bailey, the savings-and-loan purveyor who saved his own town from the clutches of greed. Sung, just like George Bailey, created a community hub. He provided seed money to businesses and mortgages to local residents, but in 2010 his managers spotted irregularities on the mortgage books, and traced them to a single employee — Ken Yu, who turned out to be taking bribes.