A Los Angeles woman who illegally sold the ketamine that killed the actor Matthew Perry was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
The woman, Jasveen Sangha, pleaded guilty last year to five federal charges connected with Mr. Perry’s overdose: three counts of distribution of ketamine; one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury; and one count of “maintaining a drug-involved premises.”
Prosecutors have emphasized in court documents that customers knew Ms. Sangha as the Ketamine Queen. They say she heard of Mr. Perry’s interest in ketamine through an acquaintance who was in touch with the actor’s personal assistant. Ms. Sangha offered to send a sample to Mr. Perry’s assistant, who ultimately bought 50 vials on Mr. Perry’s behalf.
One of those vials contained the ketamine that killed Mr. Perry, prosecutors have said. After Ms. Sangha, 42, learned of the actor’s death through news reports, she quickly sought to destroy evidence of her involvement, telling an associate to “delete all our messages,” according to court documents.
When the authorities raided her apartment in March 2024, they said they found cocaine, 79 vials of ketamine and three pounds of orange pills containing methamphetamine.
Ms. Sangha faced up to 65 years in prison, according to her plea agreement. But the government sought a sentence of 15 years, and Ms. Sangha’s lawyers asked for her to be granted supervised release after accounting for her time served.
Mr. Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the 1990s sitcom “Friends,” publicly struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for decades. He became increasingly reliant on ketamine in the weeks before he was found floating face down in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28, 2023. He was 54.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said that his death had been caused by the “acute effects” of ketamine. It added that drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of an opioid, buprenorphine, had contributed.
Ms. Sangha is one of five people who pleaded guilty in the case, including the former doctors Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez.
Mr. Plasencia, who illegally supplied Mr. Perry with ketamine in the weeks leading up to his death, was sentenced in December to 30 months in prison. Weeks later, Mr. Chavez, who worked with Mr. Plasencia to supply Mr. Perry with the drug at a steep price hike, was sentenced to three years of supervised release, including eight months of home detention. Both men surrendered their medical licenses.
Kenneth Iwamasa, Mr. Perry’s assistant, and Erik Fleming, the acquaintance who worked to sell Ms. Sangha’s ketamine to Mr. Perry, are supposed to be sentenced this month.
Ms. Sangha, a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom who lived in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, has been in federal custody since August 2024.
As federal prosecutors laid out their case against the five people they charged, Ms. Sangha emerged as a figure of particular intrigue.
On an Instagram account, she advertised herself as a curator of art and events and a jet-setter who routinely hopped between London and Los Angeles. She bolstered that image with photos and videos from pools, dance parties and fancy dinners around the world, appearing with Charlie Sheen, DJ Khaled and Perla Hudson, the former wife of the guitarist Slash.
She sought to project an air of exclusivity, calling her supply of ketamine “amazing” and telling Mr. Fleming, “Take one and try it and I have more if he likes.”
Emmanuel Morgan reports on sports, pop culture and entertainment.
The post Dealer Who Sold Ketamine to Matthew Perry Is Sentenced to 15 Years appeared first on New York Times.
