By Lisa Richwine and Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The accused Los Angeles drug dealer known as the “ketamine queen” has agreed to plead guilty to charges that she supplied the dose of the prescription anesthetic that killed “Friends” star Matthew Perry, prosecutors said on Monday.
Jasveen Sangha, 42, who authorities said ran an illegal narcotics “stash house” in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles and was due to stand trial in September, will plead guilty to five charges under a deal with federal prosecutors, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Four other co-defendants in the case – two physicians, Perry’s personal assistant and another man who admitted acting as an intermediary in selling ketamine to the actor – have already pleaded guilty to various charges, though none has yet been sentenced.
All five were charged in the case one year ago.
Prosecutors said Sangha agreed to plead guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of illegal distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Sangha, a dual U.S.-British citizen, is expected to formally enter her plea in the coming weeks, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The charge of maintaining a drug den carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Sangha faces up to 15 years in prison for ketamine distribution that killed Perry, and 10 years for each of the three other distribution counts.
Medical examiners concluded that Perry died from acute effects of ketamine that combined with other factors to cause the actor to lose consciousness and drown in his hot tub on October 28, 2023. He was 54 years old.
FAME AND ADDICTION
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse, including periods that overlapped with the height of his fame playing the sardonic but charming Chandler Bing on the 1990s hit NBC television comedy “Friends.”
Perry’s death came a year after publication of his memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” which chronicled bouts with addiction to prescription painkillers and alcohol that he wrote had come close to ending his life more than once.
His autopsy cited interviews with associates who said Perry had been sober for 19 months prior to his death with no known substance abuse relapses.
Ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties, is sometimes prescribed to treat depression and anxiety but also is abused by recreational users.
According to Sangha’s plea agreement as outlined by the Justice Department, Sangha had supplied 51 vials of ketamine from her stash house to a go-between dealer, Erik Fleming, 55, who in turn sold the doses to Perry through his live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, 60.
It was Iwamasa, prosecutors said, who later injected Perry with at least three shots of ketamine from the vials Sangha supplied, resulting in the actor’s death, and who subsequently found him lifeless in the hot tub.
In her plea agreement, prosecutors said, Sangha also admitted selling ketamine to an individual in August 2019 who died hours later from a drug overdose.
Known to her customers on the street as the “ketamine queen,” according to prosecutors, Sangha had used her North Hollywood home to store, package and distribute various narcotics, including ketamine and methamphetamine, dating back to at least June 2019.
After learning of news reports of Perry’s death, prosecutors said, Sangha tried to scrub her Signal app of all her communications with Fleming and urged him to do likewise, instructing him to “Delete all our messages.”
Her plea deal came three weeks after a doctor who ran an urgent care clinic, Salvador Plasencia, 43, pleaded guilty to four counts of ketamine distribution and admitted to having injected Perry with the drug at the actor’s home and in the back seat of a parked car.
Another physician, Mark Chavez, 55, of San Diego, accused of illegally supplying ketamine to Plasencia, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute the drug.
According to court filings, Plasencia had once texted Chavez about Perry, writing, “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler)
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