Jasveen Sangha was told in 2019 that a customer had died from her ketamine. She kept selling. Four years later, Matthew Perry was found face-down in his hot tub, killed by the same drug from the same supplier.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced Sangha — the “Ketamine Queen,” per prosecutors — to 15 years in prison for distributing the ketamine that killed Perry in October 2023. The 42-year-old pleaded guilty last September to five federal charges, including distributing ketamine resulting in death.

She is the most severely punished of five defendants charged in connection with Perry’s overdose. Dr Salvador Plasencia, who illegally sold Perry ketamine in the weeks before his death, received 30 months. Dr Mark Chavez, who sourced the drug through a fraudulent prescription, got eight months of home detention. Perry’s live-in assistant and another middleman await sentencing.

Sangha’s attorney Mark Geragos noted that her sentence will likely exceed all other defendants’ combined. But Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett pointed to the scale of Sangha’s operation — years of dealing, thousands of pills, dozens of vials seized from her North Hollywood home — and the fact she continued after learning her product killed 33-year-old Cody McLaury in 2019.

“Had you stopped selling ketamine when I texted you, we wouldn’t be here today,” McLaury’s sister Kimberly told Sangha in court.

The sentence reflects a broader prosecutorial shift. Federal authorities are increasingly treating drug suppliers in overdose deaths as primary defendants rather than peripheral enablers. After Sangha’s indictment, then-US Attorney E. Martin Estrada delivered a blunt warning to dealers: “we will hold you accountable.”

Perry’s stepfather, journalist Keith Morrison, told the court there was “a spark to that man I have never seen anywhere else.” Fifteen years won’t change that loss. But the signal to suppliers is unmistakable.

Sources