Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal RIGGED: Massachusetts State Forensic Labs Scandal Update, February 2026 - RIGGEDLabs Podcast

Episode 24

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Published on:

23rd Feb 2026

RIGGED: Massachusetts State Forensic Labs Scandal Update, February 2026

The new RIGGEDLabs Podcast episode this week brings new development with expert perspectives from the hosts.

We last left off discussing how a group of defendants from Massachusetts Middlesex County and Suffolk County consolidated their cases and, after years of their attorneys pouring through tens of thousands of pages of discovery, are finally going to get their day in court. The evidentiary hearing date is fast approaching and is expected to take at least two to three weeks in March – next month.

Currently, all of the witnesses have been served and the Court is now deliberating whether or not to allow various witnesses’ motions to quash, so that they would not have to testify. Of note, the director of the lab, Dr. Linda Han, the head of the chemistry department, Julianne Nassif, and the lab’s top supervisor are all now claiming that they have a 5th Amendment right not to testify; meaning they do not want to testify because their answers could—to this day—subject them to criminal prosecution.

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About the Podcast

RIGGEDLabs Podcast

Hosts Jamie Folk and Ilyas Rona take a deep dive into the case responsible for the greatest violation of constitutional rights in Massachusetts history

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 whose clients rights were violated as a result of the fraud committed by the chemists in these labs. Through their investigation of this case, Folk and Rona have found that the crimes of Dookhan and Farak were just the tip of the iceberg and that multiple chemists from three state labs lied on the stand, knowingly sent people to jail for possessing drugs that were not illegal and wanted to help law enforcement send as many people to jail as possible.

Jamie Folk is an independent journal who has been investigating this case since Dookhan's arrest was first reported. He has obtained over 70k documents from the state and has interviewed several lawyers, journalists, politicians, law enforcement officials and others connected with the case over the past 7 years.

Ilyas Rona is a lawyer who represented a man sent to prison by Dookhan and another Hinton lab chemist for possessing what turned out to be a cashew for two years. He has been investigating the Hinton, Amherst and State Police labs ever since.

Season 3 begins the exploration of cases outside of Massachusetts in the hope of shining a light on other drug lab scandals throughout the country.

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About your host

James Folk

Jamie Folk has been researching and reporting on the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal since 2013. He has worked in the biotech industry around Boston for the past 17 years in the Quality Assurance space. He was a volunteer with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections from 2010 to 2015 running the Alternatives to Violence (AVP) workshops for inmates and met many victims of these labs in prison.