Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a small bank with a major presence in New York City’s Chinese community, and 19 of its former employees have been charged with inflating the qualifications of mortgage applicants to meet federal loan standards, a scheme that prosecutors say brought the bank tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten fees and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in risky mortgages to the investment market.

The indictment against the bank and its employees describes the sort of scheme that led to the financial crisis of 2008, when the risk of mortgages to borrowers was disguised and passed on to investors. As those mortgages went bad, banks considered too big to fail were brought to their knees and bailed out by taxpayers.

From May 2005 through February 2010, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Abacus mortgages were guaranteed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, based upon false information, the indictment says.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said his office had not obtained an indictment against a bank since its 1991 case against Bank of Credit and Commerce International.