The North Hollywood drug linchpin who pleaded guilty to selling the ketamine that killed Matthew Perry was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
With the sentencing, Jasveen Sangha became the third defendant of the five people who’ve pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death to be issued time in prison. She’s the only one whose plea deal included an explicit acknowledgment of causing the overdose.
For years, Sangha operated a drug trafficking business out of her Los Angeles home, marketing herself as an exclusive dealer who catered to high-profile Hollywood clientele. According to court documents, she learned in 2023 that Perry was interested in ketamine through an acquaintance of the actor’s personal assistant. She offered a sample, later supplying 50 vials, one of which killed Perry.
After she heard of the overdose, Sangha moved to destroy evidence of her involvement in the crime, prosecutors said. She told a coconspirator to “delete all our messages,” according to court filings.
Prosecutors painted Sanga as an unrepentant drug trafficker who “didn’t care” about Perry’s death and “kept selling” even after discovering the ketamine she supplied the actor may have killed him. They stressed that she sold drugs to another man, Cody McLaury, in 2019 that also caused his death. When law enforcement raided her house, they discovered more than 1.5 kilograms of pressed methamphetamine pills.
In court filings, Sanga pushed back no her portrayal as a large-scale drug dealer and that she didn’t cause the chain of events that ultimately killed Perry. She emphasized that she simply obtained ketamine from an upstream source and resold it.
Sanga pleaded guilty last year to five federal charges connected with Perry’s death: three counts of distribution of ketamine; one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death; and one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace, who delivered the sentence, complied with the government’s request to issue a sentence of 15 years followed by three years of supervised release. Sangha faced a potential sentence of up to 65 years in prison.
Debbie Perry, the actor’s stepmother, urged the court in a victim impact statement to deliver the maximum possible prison sentence. She wrote that Jasveen caused the pain of “hundreds maybe thousands” that is “irreversible.” She added, “There is no joy” and “no light in the window.”
Last year, Salvador Plasencia, the doctor who pleaded guilty to charges related to supplying Perry with 20 vials of ketamine over two weeks in the period directly leading up to Perry’s death, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Mark Chavez, who operated a ketamine clinic and sold the drug to Plasencia, was sentenced to three years of probation and eight months of home detention.
