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PODCAST

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast

On September 28, 2012, Massachusetts state chemist Annie Dookhan was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice and falsification of academic records. Approximately four months later another chemist, Sonja Farak, was arrested for using the drugs she was supposed to be testing and the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal was born. Hosts Jamie Folk and Ilyas Rona will be exploring the William H Hinton, UMass Amherst and State Police crime labs associated with this scandal and speak with the lawyers

true crime chemistry

All Episodes

02:00:38

Response To The OIG's Supplemental Report

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/09/16

Jamie, Ilyas and Chris review lawyer Nathan Tamulis' Feburary 2016 response to the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General Supplemental Report. The sheer amount of contradictions, half truths and outright falsehoods that exist in this report is depressingly unsurprising.

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01:18:57

The OIG's Supplemental Report Part 2

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/07/27

Ilyas, Chris and Jamie go through the rest of the OIG's Supplemental report. They discuss the inconsistencies in the report and begin looking into the Class E drug classification disaster that was briefly touched upon in the report. Much of the testing malfeasance covered in this episode was done by chemists not named Annie Dookhan yet the OIG still insists Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the lab.

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01:33:15

The OIG's Supplemental Report Part 1

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/07/17

Jamie, Ilyas and Chris begin season 2 of Rigged by covering the latest news on the former Attorney General employees who hid the extent of Sonja Farak's drug use from defense attorneys. They then discuss the 2016 Inspector General supplemental report which got little to no media attention. This report documented the OIG's retesting of samples that the lab ran multiple times while only reporting the final results to the courts. This was clearly the lab doing everything it could to make sure that

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21:00

Intro To Season 2 of Rigged

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/07/06

Season two of Rigged is kicked off with Ilyas, Jamie and Chris giving a preview of what is in store for the new season. We will touch on the new developments with the Drug Lab cases and also explore some other law enforcement driven scandals that have been making headlines in MA. These other scandals will include the multiple arrests of evidence room officers in MA as well as the State Police Overtime scandal. This season is going to be a bit more diverse and will examine more drivers of the

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01:07:58

Season 1 Finale Amherst Lab Operations

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/03/26

As it turns out, Annie Dookhan wasn't the only chemist who was friendly with the DAs. In the season 1 finale of Rigged, the boys explore Sonja Farak's emails with the DAs for Western Massachusetts. While listening to this episode, please keep in mind that Farak admitted to being high on cocaine, crack, meth, pot and LSD while testifying to lock people in prison for doing the exact same things. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials were completely clueless as to Farak's state and they also

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49:42

Amherst Lab Operations Part 1 Luke Ryan Returns

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/03/16

In the penultimate episode of season 1 of Rigged, Luke Ryan returns to discuss the Amherst Lab Operations. Chris, Jamie, Ilyas and Luke look at the media bias that led to keeping the Amherst Lab open and misinforming the public on just how bad the Amherst Lab was. Truly scary considering the implications keeping these labs open had on many people's lives.

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01:17:16

Hinton Lab Operations Part 5

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/02/28

After reviewing thousands of documents regarding the investigations Massachusetts did into the state drug labs, perhaps the most disturbing finding is that exactly one person expressed regret that hundreds of thousands of people were denied their right to a fair trial. That one person was Annie Dookhan, the one most responsible for sending innocent people to jail but hardly the only one that could be blamed for it. In this episode Chris, Jamie and Ilyas review the last of the interviews with the

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01:01:29

Hinton Lab Operations Part 4

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/02/21

We call this part 3 of the Hinton Lab operations review but it is really part 4. We review Betsy O'Brien's interview with the State Police as well as other chemists. We also dive into an investigation done by the lab after the June Breach that has never been mentioned anywhere. There are many laughs to be had in this episode as the incompetence of the Hinton Drug Testing Lab is on full display. Truly scary stuff here considering how many people lost their freedom due to the testing in this

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01:38:29

Hinton Lab Operation Part 3: Jim McKenna Returns

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/02/08

Every show we like to introduce something new about this case and this show is no exception. Jim McKenna joins Ilyas, Jamie and Chris to review the interviews the Hinton Lab chemists gave to the state police and OIG. We discover that the Hinton Lab actually investigated how certain chemists method of testing samples actually contaminated within an 18 inch radius. While 18 inches doesn't sound like a lot, you have to remember that these chemists operated very close to each other with open

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01:14:44

Hinton Lab Operations Part 2

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/01/27

The Hinton Lab Operations and The June Breach that exposed Dookhan's maleficence are explored in this episode. The June Breach was when Annie took samples out of the evidence offices without getting them assigned to her by the evidence officer. She had asked the evidence office for the samples to be assigned to her but they refused so she just took them. This event led to her being fired and eventually arrested.

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44:44

WIlliam H Hinton Drug Lab Operations Part 1

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/01/15

As anyone who has made it this far into our podcast knows, Annie Dookhan was not the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab. Many chemists at this lab gave false testimony on the stand, used bogus testing methods, lied to investigators and all of them hated the criminal defendants whose evidence they were charged with testing. In part one of our look at the lab, we look at the never before seen documents from the Massachusetts inspector general's investigation from 2013 and discover that many higher

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01:05:47

Annie Dookhan's Motive

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2021/01/02

In 2014, the Massachusetts Inspector General released its report on the William H Hinton Drug Lab from 2002 - 2012. The OIG famously concluded that "Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab." While this conclusion has been completely debunked by the documentation that has been release in the years since, what has been overlooked is what the OIG said about Dookhan's motive. They said that they couldn't determine why Dookhan changed negative drug results to positive, they said it

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40:05

Amherst Lab Victim Duane Cook Interview

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/12/27

Duane Cook spent six years of his life behind bars while the state knew his evidence was tampered with by Farak and refused to give him his freedom. This powerful episode clearly demonstrates the lengths the state of Massachusetts went to keep people locked up regardless of their actual guilt or innocence.

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57:25

Annie Dookhan Bombshell Interview Part 2

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/12/20

The second part of the March 2016 interview the Massachusetts Attorney General's office conducted with freshly released Annie Dookhan. Ilyas, Chris and Jamie speculate that Dookhan agreed to the interview as part of her plea agreement which saw her serve under two and a half years on a three to five year sentence. Dookhan makes a false assertion that could jeopardize her future freedom if enough media attention is paid to this interview. Sad that our laws only matter when the media points out

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57:17

Annie Dookhan Bombshell Interview Part 1

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/12/13

About a month after Annie Dookhan was released from jail, the Massachusetts Attorney General's office brought her in to interview her about lab operations. During the course of the interview, Dookhan falsely represented that she did not manufacture drug standards. Chris, Jamie and Ilyas found clearly evidence of the contrary. If Dookhan was poor and not part of a massive government cover up, she would have been charged with lying to prosecutors and possibly back in jail. As it is she was never

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50:08

Jim Hanchett Interview Part 3: The Eye of Braxus

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/12/06

Jim Hanchett is asked why the chemists who worked in his lab misclassified drugs on the stand. When confronted with evidence that Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan conspired to do just that, Hanchett blurts out "We don't just make stuff up!". Unfortunately for many in Massachusetts, his lab was doing just that.

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02:04:36

The Tragedy of Jim Hanchett Part 2

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/11/29

Continuation of the Hanchett Interview where he confesses to more incompetence and general bad lab practices.

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01:08:16

The Tragedy of Jim Hanchett Part 1

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/11/24

There are trainwrecks, there are shitshows and then there is the Amherst Drug Testing Lab supervised by Jim Hanchett. Under Hanchett's "supervision", Sonja Farak was allowed to freely steal from police submitted evidence for nearly a decade and why not. Hanchett himself admitted that the lab was too cheap to buy real drug testing standards so he would just pinch from the used samples to make the standards by which the lab tested evidence against since, as Hanchett puts it, before he started at the

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01:35:08

Examining the Newly Released OIG Internal...

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/11/15

After years of litigation, the Massachusetts ACLU prevailed in court and obtained several internal OIG emails which depict conversations the MA OIG had regarding their Hinton Lab investigation back in 2013. The emails directly contradict the OIG's own conclusion that Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab. Corruption at the highest level of the lab and in the state government are examined and official conclusions are refuted in this explosive episode of the Rigged Podcast.

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54:12

Former University of Massachusetts Amherst Chemist...

Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast ·

2020/10/26

Part 2 of the epic interview the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office had with former Amherst Chemist Sharon Salem in November of 2015. This interview was part of the AG's investigation into the practices at the drug lab and came almost two years after the Massachusetts Inspector General told the public that Annie Dookhan was the sole bad actor in a Drug Lab scandal that resulted in the dismissal of tens of thousands of criminal cases. Salem discusses how she and her coworkers at the University

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