JOHOR BARU: The tampering with urine samples by pathologists is not unprecedented, as a similar incident occurred in the United States over a decade ago.
The incident, involving two female employees, Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan, led to the dismissal of over 40,000 police cases in Massachusetts.
Farak and Dookhan worked in separate laboratories within the state and had mishandled laboratory results for several years until their arrests in 2013 and 2012, respectively.
According to Wikipedia, Farak informed investigators that she smoked crack every day at work. Additionally, she admitted to taking methamphetamine, amphetamine, ketamine, ecstasy, and LSD, both while at work and at home.
The drugs were all free and often of exceptionally high quality because Farak, as a chemist at the Massachusetts crime lab in Amherst, was responsible for testing drugs for police departments in criminal cases across the state.
Her eight-year drug buffet ended when co-workers noticed missing samples in 2013.
A year earlier, Dookhan was exposed for falsifying her analysis reports to police and the courts over the course of several years. This led to an investigation that potentially involved around 20,000 defendants, whose cases Dookhan may have been involved in.In the same year, Dookhan was sentenced to three to five years of imprisonment and two years of probation for crimes related to falsifying drug tests.
In 2014, Farak was found guilty of tampering with evidence, possession of illegal drugs, and stealing cocaine from the lab. She received an 18-month sentence, along with five years of probation.
The two scandals involving the two chemists captured Hollywood’s attention, with Netflix producing a short, four-part series titled “How to Fix a Drug Scandal,” which premiered three years ago.
