Chemist
Sonja Farak stole and apparently used illegal drugs entrusted to her by
the state to test as evidence in criminal cases, replacing the drugs
with look-alike substances in an attempt to hide her actions,
authorities said in court documents.
Last
week, authorities followed a trail of evidence that took them from
Farak’s work station at the State Police-run lab in Amherst to her car,
where they recovered cocaine and heroin that had been previously
submitted by law enforcement to the lab for testing, according to the
newly released documents.
Farak,
35, parked her Volkswagen Golf outside Springfield District Court on
Friday, where she was scheduled to testify as an expert witness in an
unrelated drug case. Troopers confronted her inside that courthouse and
seized her car, which they searched, discovering the drugs and other lab
materials, the documents state.
Farak
was arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court on Tuesday and
charged with two counts each of withholding evidence and drug
possession. Her attorney, Elaine Pourinski, pleaded not guilty on her
behalf.
Pourinski
told Judge John Payne that Farak does not have a criminal record and is
regarded as an upstanding citizen in her neighborhood in Northampton.
Two hours after the arraignment, Farak’s parents posted $5,000 cash
bail.
With
an unprecedented drug lab scandal already revolving around Annie
Dookhan, the chemist who allegedly tampered with hundreds of evidence
samples at the Hinton lab in Jamaica Plain, leading to the release of
almost 200 defendants, Farak’s alleged wrongdoings further tarnish a
system critically important to prosecutors.
So
far there is evidence suggesting that Farak allegedly corrupted only
two cases, but an investigation by State Police is ongoing. That
investigation may lead authorities back to Boston and the Hinton lab,
where both chemists worked in 2003 and 2004.
Though
Farak spent most of her career in Amherst, she analyzed more than
11,000 drug samples from Boston cases, according to records from the
Jamaica Plain lab. As a result, questions about the integrity of her
work could have an impact in Boston.
While
working at the Jamaica Plain lab, records show Farak analyzed more than
9,000 samples, frequently producing more test results per month than
Dookhan, who is now facing criminal indictment for allegedly falsifying
test results. After Farak was transferred to Amherst in 2004, she still
analyzed drug evidence from nearly 2,000 Boston cases, according to the
records.
The
Hinton lab, which had been run by the state’s Department of Health, was
shut down early last year by Governor Deval Patrick after the
allegations against Dookhan surfaced. The task of analyzing drug samples
was transferred to State Police labs.
Curtis
Wood, undersecretary of forensic science and technology for the
executive office of public safety and security, said Tuesday that the
Amherst lab, which handles 3,000 cases a year, has been shut down and
the chemists and case load have been sent to a Sudbury lab.
Patrick
said that he, like the public, was surprised that another chemist has
been charged with a crime. “My first reaction was, you’ve got to be
kidding me,” he said.
He said that after learning more about the case, he believes it is completely different from the scandal involving Dookhan.
“The most important take-home I think is that no individual’s due process rights were compromised” in the Amherst lab, he said.
He
also rejected Republican legislation calling for more drug lab
oversight, but said he would be willing to talk with its sponsors.
In
2011, Dookhan tried to help Farak analyze a drug she had never examined
before. A supervisor, Peter Piro, asked Dookhan to assist Farak in
analyzing something called “lisdexamfetamine.”
Farak
was concerned because when she ran the sample, she said she got a “very
poor” match, Piro said, adding that she said she was “concerned that it
may not be what it is supposed to be. Only thing [evidence] on the guy
too.”
Farak’s attorney said Tuesday that the media attention that followed her client has been exacerbated by the Dookhan scandal.
“If
we didn’t have the case from the eastern part of the state, there would
not be so much scrutiny,” Pourinski said during the arraignment, as a
half-dozen cameras focused on her and Farak, sitting in a holding bin
with her hands cuffed.
Several of the defendant’s neighbors submitted statements to the court supporting Farak.
“As
a licensed clinical social worker for 28 years, I am often in the
position of vouching for an individual’s character and am happy to do so
for Ms. Farak,” said Marcie D. Cooper, who lives several houses away
from Farak on Laurel Park, a street within a condominium community.
Neighbors
talked about how Farak always took it upon herself to clear snow from
their driveways, walk their dogs while they were on vacation, and drive
incapacitated neighbors to medical appointments.
But
in the prosecutor’s statement of facts on the case, contained in the
same file as those letters, authorities say one of Farak’s coworkers
noticed something wrong with two samples last Thursday.
The
coworker was attempting to find the samples to match with the
certification Farak had completed. After she was unable to locate the
samples, the coworker alerted a supervisor. They looked in Farak’s work
station cabinet and allegedly found cocaine and a counterfeit substance.
To
protect the vital “chain-of-custody” at the lab, proper procedure
dictates that samples checked out to a chemist be stored in a temporary
evidence locker when they are away from their stations.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/22/state-chemist-pleads-not-guilty-charges-tampering-with-drugs-being-tested/YaC09bhANjpi8BTjQGo74I/story.html
