‘Ketamine Queen’ jailed for 15 years over Matthew Perry drugs
LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — A drug dealer dubbed the ‘Ketamine Queen’ who sold the drugs that killed Friends star Matthew Perry was jailed for 15 years by a California court on Wednesday.
Jasveen Sangha, 42, was one of five people charged over the death of the beloved Canadian-American actor, who was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his luxury Los Angeles home in 2023.
Sangha, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Britain, has been in federal custody since August 2024.
Perry, 54, had openly struggled for decades with addictions, but had appeared to colleagues to be beating his demons when he died.
His death set off waves of grief among generations of Friends fans and sparked a police probe that uncovered a ring of suppliers and enablers, including medical doctors who were callously profiting from the pain of a man they should have been helping.
Dr Salvador Plasencia, who admitted four counts of distribution of ketamine in the weeks before Perry’s death, was ordered to serve 30 months in jail when he was sentenced last year.
Another doctor, Mark Chavez, was ordered to be confined at home and told to do hundreds of hours of community service.
Plasencia bought ketamine off Chavez and sold it to the American-Canadian actor at hugely inflated prices.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia wrote in one text message.
Prosecutors said addict Perry was paying more than US$2,000 per vial of ketamine; his dealers paid a fraction of that.
Sangha worked with a middleman, Erik Fleming, to sell 51 vials of ketamine to Perry’s live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa.
Iwamasa repeatedly injected Perry with the ketamine that she had supplied, including on October 28, 2023, when he administered at least three shots of Sangha’s drugs, which killed the actor.
When Sangha heard news reports about Perry’s sudden death, she tried to cover her tracks.
“Delete all our messages,” she instructed Fleming.
When investigators raided Sangha’s home in North Hollywood, they found methamphetamine, ketamine, ecstasy, cocaine, and counterfeit Xanax pills, as well as a money-counting machine, a scale, and devices to detect wireless signals and hidden cameras.
Former Friends star Matthew Perry
