play Live Sign upShow navigation menuplay Live Click here to searchsearchSign upNews|CourtsWoman given 15 years for role supplying drugs linked to Matthew Perry deathDrug dealer who supplied dose that eventually led to Perry’s death in 2023 pleaded guilty to five felony drug counts.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoActor Matthew Perry chronicled his struggles with substance abuse in a 2022 memoir [File: Gabriel Bouys/AFP]By AFP and ReutersPublished On 8 Apr 20268 Apr 2026Jasveen Sangha has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role in supplying illegal drugs to Matthew Perry, an actor from the TV show Friends, who died from the “acute effects of ketamine” in 2023.
In a court appearance on Wednesday, Sangha expressed regret for her role in supplying Perry with the drug.
“I take full responsibility for my actions. These were horrible choices that ultimately proved tragic,” the 42-year-old Sangha said, wearing beige prison clothing.
District Judge Sherilyn Garnett ultimately agreed with the prison term recommended by federal prosecutors and handed down a 15-year sentence.
Sangha pleaded guilty in September to five felony drug counts linked to the 54-year-old Perry’s death. Her defence lawyers had asked for a sentence limited to time already served.
She was first arrested in 2024 and has been in custody for nearly a year and eight months.
Judge Garnett said that part of her reasoning for the harsher sentence was Sangha’s continued sale of ketamine after Perry’s death, which showed a lack of remorse in her opinion.
Perry had shared his struggles with substance abuse and prescription painkillers, including in his memoir called Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, published the year before his death.
Federal officials have said that Perry became addicted to ketamine during infusions at a clinic meant to help him with issues of anxiety and depression.
When doctors declined his request to increase his dosage, he turned to alternative sources that prosecutors say exploited his addiction for financial gain.
Sangha, referred to by customers as the “Ketamine Queen”, admitted to selling 51 vials of the drug to a go-between named Erik Fleming, who then sold them to Perry through the actor’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa.
Prosecutors say that Iwamasa injected Perry with at least three shots of ketamine from those vials, leading to the actor’s death.
Sangha pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, as well as three counts of illegal distribution of ketamine, and one count of distributing ketamine resulting in death.
Her sentence was harsher than those of two doctors who have been sentenced in connection to Perry’s death, drawing frustration from her lawyer Mark Geragos.
“There’s no way that Jasveen is five times more culpable than the person who injected Matthew Perry with the drug, or the doctor who got the drug,” Geragos told reporters after the hearing.
