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What happened to Sonja Farak, the primary subject of How to Fix a Drug Scandal? Erin Lee Carr’s four-part Netflix docuseries reveals that the Amherst, Massachusetts drug analyst Sonja Farak tampered with evidence at Morrill Science Center from 2004 to 2013, mainly to support her drug addiction. Additionally, Boston chemist Annie Dookhan actively attempted to affect pending legal cases by “drylabbing,” or fabricating drug-related evidence.
How to Fix a Drug Scandal doesn’t fully dive into Farak’s personal life beyond her drug addiction, aside from a sequence about her upbringing. In fact, actress Shannon O’Neill, who is primarily known for comedic work in High Maintenance and Broad City, portrays Farak in the Netflix docuseries‘ reenactments of court testimony. How to Fix a Drug Scandal uses these Farak scenes to pinpoint how her actions affected the bigger picture. Over 35,000 drug-related cases were dismissed because of Farak and Dookhan’s evidence tampering.
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As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able to examine evidence, after the fact, that should have been identified as “exculpable” and handed over by the prosecutors for cases that were affected by Farak’s unreliable professional opinions. Here’s what we know about Farak in the present day.
Farak served 13 months in prison and was released in 2015. She’s reportedly sober now and provided a Hatfield, Massachusetts contact address when responding to a federal lawsuit. However, much like Dookhan – the other infamous subject of How to Fix a Drug Scandal - Farak has unsurprisingly kept a low profile when not appearing in court for civil cases.
Interestingly, Erin Lee Carr – the director of How to Fix a Drug Scandal - did manage to speak with Farak, who doesn’t appear on camera in the Netflix docuseries because of a pending case. Carr didn’t reveal much about their conversation, but stated that “I felt a lot of gratitude that she met me” and that she was interested in “humanizing” Farak’s story. But despite the “three-dimensional portrait” that drives the entirety of How to Fix a Drug Scandal, its exploration of Farak’s background is limited to her high school accomplishments while specifically detailing her drug use through court records. Farak is a difficult person to interpret from afar because not much is known about her life since 2015, and How to Fix a Drug Scandal doesn’t provide any direct interview footage that allows for a little more insight.
