A woman who has come to be known as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty on Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him.
Jasveen Sangha changed her previous not guilty plea at a federal court in Los Angeles and became the fifth and final defendant charged in the overdose death of the Friends star to plead guilty after a deal with prosecutors. Her trial had been planned to start later this month.
Wearing tan jail garb, Sangha stood in court Wednesday next to her attorney Mark Geragos as she repeated “guilty” five times when US District Court Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett asked for her pleas.
Before that, she answered “yes, your honor” to dozens of procedural questions, hedging slightly when the judge asked if she knew the drugs she was giving to co-defendant and middleman Erik Fleming were going to Perry.
“There was no way I could tell 100%,” she said. She later added, to a similar question on vials of ketamine she gave to Fleming, that “I didn’t know if all of them or some of them” were bound for Perry. The comments didn’t affect her plea agreement.
Her trial had been planned to start later this month.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a 42-year-old citizen of the US and the UK, as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents.
She pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Prosecutors agreed to drop three other counts related to the distribution of ketamine.
The final plea deal came a year after federal prosecutors announced that five people had been charged in Perry’s 28 October 2023 death after a sweeping investigation.
Sangha will be sentenced in December. She could get up to 65 years in prison. The judge is not bound to follow any terms of the plea agreement, but prosecutors said in the document that they will ask for less than the maximum. None of the co-defendants have been sentenced yet.
Sangha and Dr Salvador Plasencia, who pleaded guilty in July, had been the primary targets of the investigation. Three other defendants – Dr Mark Chavez, Kenneth Iwamasa and Erik Fleming – pleaded guilty 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. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.
Sangha presented a posh lifestyle on Instagram, with photos of herself with the rich and famous in cities around the globe. Prosecutors said she privately presented herself as a dealer who sold to the same kind of high-class customers.
Perry had been using ketamine 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, and his search for more led him to Sangha through his friend Fleming about two weeks before his death, prosecutors said.
Fleming messaged Perry’s assistant saying her ketamine was “amazing” and that she deals only “with high-end and celebs”.
Perry bought large amounts of ketamine from Sangha, including 25 vials for $6,000 in cash four days before his death, prosecutors said.
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.
Sangha has been in federal custody for about a year.
Perry struggled with addiction for many 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.
