A few weeks earlier, on October 28, 2023, her ketamine customer—beloved Friends actor Matthew Perry—was found facedown in a hot tub in his home, dead from an overdose of the drug she sold him.
Jasveen Sangha, known to friends as the “Ketamine Queen,” boasted on social media about her glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle—lounging poolside in Mexico, sipping cocktails from a coconut, and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous in China, Dubai and Spain.
And on April 8, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role in Matthew Perry’s death.
Another client had already died from drugs she supplied.
In a victim impact statement presented to the court the day before, the actor’s stepmother, Debbie Perry, wrote, “The pain you’ve caused to hundreds, maybe thousands, is irreversible. There is no joy … No light in the window … You caused this … You who have talent for business enough to make money chose the one way that hurts people.”
Sangha preyed on Matthew Perry’s addiction through a mutual acquaintance, Erik Fleming, and Perry’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. She sent a sample via Fleming, calling her supply “amazing,” and passing along the message: “Take one and try it and I have more if he likes.”
Two days after the offer, prosecutors say Sangha sent the actor an unlabeled glass vial with a blue cap. The next day, Iwamasa purchased 25 vials on Perry’s behalf, followed by another 25, two weeks later.
Prosecutors say one of those 50 vials contained the dose that killed him.
In the coming weeks, Fleming and Iwamasa are scheduled to be sentenced for conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
Last December, Salvador Plasencia—the doctor who infamously texted fellow doctor-turned-co-defendant Mark Chavez, “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” a reference to Perry—pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing the drug. He was fined $5,600 and sentenced to 30 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
Chavez, for his part, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight months of home confinement, three years of supervised release and 300 hours of community service.
Neither ex-doctor provided the fatal dose to Matthew Perry—that was Sangha. But all five defendants knew what they were doing, understood that ketamine was dangerous and recognized their customer was addicted to it.
Ketamine, used recreationally as a “club” drug, has been classified as a Schedule III controlled substance, making it illegal for non-medical use. But that label hasn’t prevented its wildly uncontrolled proliferation—the unregulated landscape becoming, in the words of one psychotherapist, “a wild, wild west.”
Its effects are well catalogued: disorientation, confusion, hallucinations, feelings of dreamlike detachment and, in the case of users like Matthew Perry, death.
But for the five defendants, profit trumped all else. They exploited Perry’s addiction for financial gain, joining the bullish ketamine market, which grew more than twentyfold—from $8.3 million in 2017 to $185 million in 2022—according to The Wall Street Journal. MarketWatch estimates the global ketamine market will swell to $3.8 billion by 2027.
Plasencia’s text made clear he saw Perry as a sucker—and charged him $2,000 for each $12 vial of the drug.
Sangha, whose cushy lifestyle was built on the high-volume drug trafficking operation she ran from her North Hollywood residence, knew the poison she was dispensing. Another client had already died from drugs she supplied.
That was in 2019.
How did she react?
By expanding her operation—marketing herself as an exclusive dealer catering to high-profile Hollywood clientele.
She only stopped when justice finally caught up with her.
The quote below Jasveen Sangha’s high school yearbook portrait reads, “It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.”
In the end, it wasn’t the whispers that mattered—but what was put on the record in court: “Please give this heartless woman the maximum prison sentence so she won’t be able to hurt other families like ours.”
