Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016)

  Hey, remember the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent housing market collapse?  Remember how zero (0) people went to jail over it?  Remember how the government gave $700 billion in taxpayer money to banks?  Well, it turns out there was one (1) indictment that came out of it.

New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced prosecution against Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a family-owned, 1st-generation American-founded bank of six branches primarily servicing an immigrant community in Chinatown.

This documentary, produced by PBS' Frontline program, details how the Sung family discovered one of their loan officers creating fraudulent reports and actively extorting money from borrowers in the form of cash gifts.  They fired him, did an internal investigation, fired several more people, and reported their findings to the government watchdog organization.  In other words, they did everything they were supposed to do and still got expressly targeted as a scapegoat for the entire mortgage crisis.

This is the kind of infuriating shit that makes me want to burn down entire institutions.  If you too want to be angry, Abacus is streaming for free on Kanopy and is also available through PBS.  And then join a credit union.  Because fuck 'em, that's why!