'Ketamine Queen' gets 15 years prison for supplying fatal dose to Matthew Perry

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Southern California drug dealer known as the Ketamine Queen was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison for supplying the dose that killed actor Matthew Perry in 2023.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett rebuffed Jasveen Sangha’s bid to be sentenced to only time served and imposed the prison term that prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles had argued for.

“You’re going to have to show some epic resilience,” the judge told Sangha, echoing the words of the defendant — herself a recovering drug addict — used in describing the efforts she has made in jail to rehabilitate herself and to stay sober.

Garnett, a Joe Biden appointee, said she was disturbed that Sangha continued to sell drugs even after she learned that one of her customers ketamine had died in 2019, possibly from the ketamine she had supplied, and that even after Perry died from an overdose in October 2023 she continued her business for another six month.

In fashioning the sentence, the judge also noted the reason Sangha had no criminal history was most likely due that she ran her business from her North Hollywood apartment, supplying high-end customers who used electronic payment methods, and as such, was less likely to draw the attention of law enforcement than street dealers.

“You are probably one of the most culpable among the defendants in this case,” Garnett said.

Sangha, 42, has been in jail since her arrest in August 2024. She pleaded guilty last year 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 or serious bodily injury.

Dressed in a white prison jumpsuit, Sangha expressed her remorse in front of a packed courtroom where some Perry’s relatives were in attendance.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” she said. “These were not mistakes but horrible choices.”

Sangha is represented by celebrity attorney Mark Geragos.

He unsuccessfully tried to convince the judge that the lengthy prison Sangha faced was largely based on the quantity of drugs found in her apartment. But, according to the attorney, of the about 3,000 pills, the government had only 27 tested. While these contained methamphetamine, Geragos argued it was bad science to infer that all the pills contained illegal drugs.

Geragos also argued, again unsuccessfully, that his client was less culpable for Perry’s death than the actor’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, who injected Perry with ketamine and then left him to drown in his hot tub.

“Fifteen years for her and you the assistant walk out of the door?” Geragos asked.

Iwamasa is yet to be sentenced.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello pointed out, though, that Iwamasa immediately cooperated with the government’s investigation while Sangha sought to destroy evidence such as text messages of her involvement with supplying Perry and told others to do the same.

The 54-year-old Perry, who rose to fame in the 1990s as one of the case of the “Friends” sitcom,  had been battling drug addiction for years before he was found dead in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home in 2023.

He had been routinely doing ketamine in the months before he died — the final dose was injected by Iwamasa, who has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.

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