‘Ketamine Queen’ gets 15 years for selling the drugs that killed Matthew Perry

A federal judge has handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling Friends star Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him.

US District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett gave the sentence to 42-year-old Jasveen Sangha, who is the third defendant to be sentenced of the five people who have pleaded guilty in connection with the overdose of the 54-year-old actor in 2023.

His role as Chandler Bing on Friends in the 1990s and 2000s made him one of the biggest television stars of the era.

Sangha stood at the podium on Wednesday just before she was sentenced and told the judge she wears her shame “like a jacket”.

“These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Sangha said, which “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends”.

“You’re going to have to show some epic resilience,” Judge Garnett said to Sangha, echoing the defendant’s words earlier in the hearing about her self-improvement.

Sangha is the only one whose plea deal included an acknowledgement of causing Perry’s death.

Prosecutors had recommend a 15-year sentence. They cast Sangha in court filings as a “Ketamine Queen” who had an elaborate drug operation catering to high-end clients to give herself a jet-setting lifestyle despite a life of privilege.

Her lawyers said in their sentencing filing that the time she has spent in jail since her indictment in August 2024 should have been sufficient. They pointed to her lack of a previous criminal record and exemplary behaviour as an inmate, as well as the unlikelihood that she would return to a life of drug dealing.

Keith Morrison, Perry’s stepfather and correspondent for NBC’s Dateline, told the judge that he and Perry’s mother Suzanne feel a “daily, grinding sadness and sorrow”.

“There was a spark to that man I have never seen anywhere else,” Mr Morrison said. “He should have had another act. Two more acts.”

Perry’s stepmother Debbie Perry told Sangha she had caused pain for “hundreds, maybe thousands” of people.

Perry was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anaesthetic, was the primary cause of death.

Drowning was cited as a secondary cause, with coronary artery disease and buprenorphine also cited as factors.

Mark Geragos, Sangha’s lawyer, said “pernicious” addiction was responsible for Perry’s death, not his client, adding: “There was nobody who was going to stop Mr Perry from doing what he was going to do.”

Perry had been using the drug through his regular doctor as a legal off-label treatment for depression, but he sought more than the doctor would give him.

That at first led him to Dr Salvador Plasencia, who admitted illegally selling him ketamine and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after prosecutors asked for three years, and it later led Perry to Sangha, who sold him 25 vials of ketamine, including the fatal dose, for 6,000 dollars (£4,500) in cash four days before his death, prosecutors said.

Another doctor, who admitted providing Plasencia the ketamine he sold to Perry, was sentenced to eight months of home detention. Perry’s assistant and his friend, who admitted acting as the actor’s middlemen, are awaiting sentencing.

The judge said she is calibrating how to sentence each of the five defendants to make sense as a whole.

Sangha pleaded guilty in September 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.

She also admitted selling drugs to another man, 33-year-old Cody McLaury, who had no connection to Perry, before his overdose death in 2019.

The prosecution said that despite Sangha’s plea, she continued drug dealing, showing her lack of remorse.

After a series of arguments about how to calculate several factors including the quantity of methamphetamine, ketamine and other drugs at Sangha’s apartment, Judge Garnett agreed with a probation report that said federal guidelines put the proper range at between 14 years and 17 and a half years.

The sentencing filing says that in 2020, when she learned that the ketamine she sold McLaury contributed to his death, “she didn’t care and kept selling”.

In 2023, the filing says that when she learned she sold Perry the drugs that caused his death, “her reaction was the same: she didn’t care and kept selling”.