The middleman who helped provide the actor Matthew Perry with the ketamine that killed him was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison.
The man, Erik Fleming, a licensed drug addiction counselor who was also an acquaintance of Mr. Perry’s, pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death. His sentence included three years of supervised release and a special assessment of $200.
Mr. Fleming said in court documents that he had met Mr. Perry a few times since 2005. When Mr. Fleming learned that Mr. Perry sought ketamine, he procured 51 vials from a drug dealer and sold them at a profit to Mr. Perry’s assistant.
Mr. Perry was discovered dead on Oct. 28, 2023, after the assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, had injected him with at least three shots of ketamine obtained from Mr. Fleming and the drug dealer, Jasveen Sangha. The actor was 54.
In a letter attached to his sentencing memorandum, Mr. Fleming apologized to Mr. Perry’s family and wrote that he took “full responsibility for my criminal acts.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Fleming wore a dark suit and glasses, and wiped his eyes briefly as the judge delivered his sentence.
“I’m still in disbelief,” Mr. Fleming told the court, adding, “It’s truly a nightmare I can’t wake up from.” He was, he said, “profoundly ashamed” of his actions.
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 home in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said 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.
Though prosecutors said sentencing guidelines called for Mr. Fleming to be given 46 to 57 months, they argued for a “downward departure,” saying in court papers that he had quickly accepted responsibility for his crimes and had agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation.
The prosecutors wrote that Mr. Fleming had “provided information to law enforcement, including identifying Sangha as the source of the ketamine that defendant supplied to Mr. Perry.”
Mr. Fleming is the fourth of five people charged in connection with Mr. Perry’s death to be sentenced. Ms. Sangha, whom prosecutors called “a more culpable defendant,” was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison. Two former doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, were each sentenced in December. Mr. Plasencia received 30 months in prison and Mr. Chavez received three years of supervised release, including eight months of home detention.
Mr. Iwamasa is scheduled to be sentenced this month.
Mr. Fleming’s lawyers had asked for a “split sentence” of 12 months: three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility, where they said he could “continue the hard work he has put into maintaining his sobriety.”
In the lawyers’ sentencing memorandum, they said the death of Mr. Fleming’s stepmother had sent him into a “tailspin,” causing him to relapse into heavy drug use and fall into a depression. He ended up “jobless and penniless, living on the couch of his younger sister’s home, feeling worthless, despondent and alone,” according to the memorandum.
It was then, in early October 2023, that Mr. Fleming got a phone call and a text message from a close friend, who told him that, while she had been helping obtain ketamine for Mr. Perry, she could no longer do so because she was “stuck in a drug treatment program,” the sentencing memo said.
“She asked Mr. Fleming to help her out by finding the ketamine Mr. Perry wanted,” the lawyers wrote, adding later that “in a moment he will regret forever, Mr. Fleming agreed to help.”
Matt Stevens is a Times reporter who writes about arts and culture from Los Angeles.
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