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Summary
- Jasveen Sangha sentenced to 15 years in prison
- Sangha pleaded guilty to ketamine distribution charges
- Matthew Perry died from acute ketamine effects in 2023
- Prosecutors described Sangha’s high-volume drug trafficking
Jasveen Sangha, a drug dealer who pleaded guilty in September to drug-related charges, including providing actor Matthew Perry with the dose of ketamine that killed him, was sentenced on April 8 to 15 years in prison.
“These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Sangha said at the hearing, adding that her choices “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends,” per the AP.
Sangha, 42, was known to her clients as the “Ketamine Queen,” according to court documents. Following an investigation into the “Friends” actor’s fatal overdose in 2023 at age 54, Sangha was charged alongside four others in August 2024. She pleaded guilty to one count of using her home for drug distribution, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Before her guilty plea, Sangha’s attorney, Mark Geragos, denied the allegations against Sangha, saying in a documentary last year that she had “never met Matthew Perry.” Sangha, who has been in custody since August 2024, is a dual citizen of the United States and Britain. Ahead of Sangha’s sentencing, prosecutors asked Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett to sentence Sangha to 15 years in prison.
“For years … Sangha operated a high-volume drug trafficking business out of her North Hollywood residence,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.
“To cultivate her business, [Sangha] marketed herself as an exclusive dealer who catered to high-profile Hollywood clientele. … While [Sangha] worked to expand and profit from her drug trafficking, she knew — and disregarded — the grave harm her conduct was causing.”
In a victim impact statement that read like a poem, Perry’s stepmother, Debbie Perry, asked the court for a maximum sentence for Sangha.
“The pain you’ve caused/ to hundreds maybe thousands,” she wrote, “Is irreversible.”
Matthew Perry, best known for his role as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” the sitcom that became a cultural behemoth in the 1990s, wrote openly about his struggles with addiction. In his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” he recounted his struggles with Vicodin, alcohol, cocaine, Xanax and Suboxone, as well as scores of rehab stints.
“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season,” Perry wrote of his 10 seasons on “Friends.” “When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol. When I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”
He also starred in films such as “The Whole Nine Yards” (2000) and “17 Again” (2009), and was Emmy-nominated for his appearances on “The West Wing” and in the TV movie “The Ron Clark Story.”
Perry was found dead in a hot tub at his home in October 2023. Around the time of his death, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety, but he was also addicted to the drug, according to prosecutors.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office concluded the actor had died of the acute effects of ketamine, ruling the death an accident with no signs of foul play, before an investigation was launched into the death.
Sangha is the third of the suspects connected to Perry’s death to be charged. In December, Salvador Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for multiple drug charges. Later that month, Mark Chavez received a sentence of eight months of home confinement. Both Plasencia and Chavez are physicians.
Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming and his live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa both pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine in October 2024 and will be sentenced in the coming weeks.
