LOS ANGELES — A woman known as the “Ketamine Queen,” charged with selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, agreed to plead guilty Monday.
Jasveen Sangha is the last among five defendants to make a plea deal with federal prosecutors concerning the overdose death of a “Friends” actor. Initially, she had pled not guilty, but her new plea allows her to sidestep a trial that was anticipated to occur in August.
Sangha has consented to plead guilty to multiple charges: maintaining a drug-related location, distributing ketamine on three occasions, and the distribution of ketamine that resulted in either death or severe injury.
Authorities labeled Sangha as a significant drug trafficker, referring to her as the “Ketamine Queen,” a title used in both formal documents and press releases. Sangha acknowledged selling four ketamine vials to Cody McLaury, who died from an overdose in 2019, although McLaury wasn’t linked to Perry.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors will dismiss three charges concerning ketamine distribution and one charge concerning methamphetamine distribution, which was unrelated to the Perry case.
The federal charges against Sangha included conspiracy to distribute ketamine, maintaining a drug-related location, possessing methamphetamine and ketamine with intent to distribute, and five charges of ketamine distribution.
Prosecutors noted Sangha would officially plead guilty at an upcoming hearing where her sentencing will be determined. She faces a possible sentence of up to 45 years in prison. Attempts to reach Sangha’s attorneys for comments were unsuccessful.
She and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who signed his own plea deal June 16, had been the primary targets of the investigation. Three other defendants – Dr. Mark Chavez, Kenneth Iwamasa and Erik Fleming – agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation, which included statements implicating Sangha and Plasencia.
Perry was found dead in his Los Angeles home by Iwamasa, his assistant, on Oct. 28, 2023. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.
The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor as a legal, but off-label, treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, sought more ketamine than his doctor would give him. He began getting it from Plasencia about a month before his death, then started getting still more from Sangha about two weeks before his death, prosecutors said.
Perry and Iwamasa found Sangha through Perry’s friend Fleming. In their plea agreements, both men described the subsequent deals in detail.
Fleming messaged Iwamasa saying Sangha’s ketamine was “unmarked but it’s amazing,” according to court documents. Fleming texted Iwamasa that she only deals “with high end and celebs. If it were not great stuff she’d lose her business.”
With the two men acting as middlemen, Perry bought large amounts of ketamine from Sangha, including 25 vials for $6,000 in cash four days before his death. Leading up to his death, Iwamasa repeatedly injected Perry with the ketamine that Sangha supplied to Fleming, prosecutors said.
“Specifically, on October 28, 2023, Iwamasa injected Perry with at least three shots of Sangha’s ketamine, which caused Perry’s death,” prosecutors said in a statement.
On the day of Perry’s death, Sangha told Fleming they should delete all the messages they had sent each other, according to her indictment. She updated her settings that day to automatically delete her messages with Fleming.
Sangha’s home in North Hollywood, California, was raided in March 2024 by Drug Enforcement Administration agents who found large amounts of methamphetamines and ketamine, according to an affidavit from an agent. She was indicted that June, arrested that August and has been held in jail since.
None of the defendants has yet been sentenced.
Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit series.
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