The ‘ketamine queen’ accused of preying on Matthew Perry

Jasveen Sangha reportedly ran a successful drug ‘emporium’ for years. Now she’s accused of exploiting the Friends star’s addiction

When Matthew Perry was found floating face down in his hot tub in October last year, it seemed like another tragic case of a Hollywood star who had lost a very personal battle with addiction.
But this week, after five people – including two doctors and a reputed high-end drug dealer – were charged with supplying and administering ketamine to the actor in the final weeks of his life, it appeared that he had in fact been preyed on.
The case has brought to light the murky world of unscrupulous clinicians who are willing to cash in on vulnerable patients, high-end, discreet drug dealers who cater to celebrities, and the boom in the class B substance among LA’s wealthy elite.
One of those facing charges is Jasveen Sangha, known as “The Ketamine Queen” among her Hollywood clients. The 41-year-old has been accused of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of the drug resulting in death. 
Sangha pleaded not guilty to the charges in court on Thursday, but prosecutors say she was responsible for supplying the drugs that caused Perry’s demise, having exploited his addiction for profit.
Texts between the defendants stated that Sangha was known in the community for “only deal[ing] with high end and celebs”.  Unlike most run-of-the-mill dealers, Sangha lived a lavish lifestyle similar to that of her customers. The 41-year-old, who has joint British and US citizenship, regularly posted pictures of herself on Instagram draped in designer products including Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery, Louis Vuitton trainers and Chanel clothes. She also boasted of her health and wellness journey, involving IV-drips and sound healing. 
But to her reported network of clients, Sangha’s North Hollywood home was referred to as the “Sangha Stash House”. When police raided it in March 2024, they found an “emporium” of narcotics, including 1,978 grams of methamphetamine and some 80 vials containing a clear liquid that tested positive for ketamine. 
There were also thousands of pills, laced with cocaine and Xanax, among other drugs.
The raid came some six months after Sangha allegedly messaged her co-defendant Eric Fleming, reported to be an acquaintance of Perry’s.  On October 11, 2023, she told him her ketamine was “high quality” and offered a sample to the Friends star, stating: “It’s unmarked but it’s amazing – he take one and try it and I have more if he likes.” Fleming is alleged to have then delivered a vial to Perry’s home. 
Within a fortnight, the actor’s live-in-assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, allegedly agreed to buy 25 more and advanced Fleming $500 (£390) for the purpose of “logistics”. They were delivered on October 24. “As part of the transaction … Sangha included ketamine lollipops as an “add-on” for his large ketamine order,” an indictment filed in a federal court in California earlier this week states.
Four days later, Perry died. That day, October 28, Sangha allegedly sent a text message to Fleming urging him to “delete all our messages”.  Shortly afterwards, she flaunted trips to Mexico and Japan on social media.
Perry’s death came just four years after another of her alleged clients had fatally overdosed, according to court documents. In 2019, after a family member of one of her other customers messaged her to say that he’d died from drugs she’d reportedly supplied, Sangha conducted a Google search for “can ketamine be listed as a cause of death[?]” She could now face life in prison.
Also charged was Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 42, nicknamed “Dr. P,” who allegedly distributed about 20 vials of ketamine to Perry in exchange for $55,000 in cash between September and October 2023. “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia wrote in a text message about Perry, according to court documents, before adding: “Let’s find out.” He has pleaded not guilty, but could face up to 120 years in prison if convicted.
“These defendants cared more about profiting off of Mr. Perry than caring for his well-being,” says Martin Estrada, United States Attorney. “Drug dealers selling dangerous substances are gambling with other people’s lives over greed. This case, along with our many other prosecutions of drug-dealers who cause death, send a clear message that we will hold drug-dealers accountable for the deaths they cause.”
Iwamasa, too, has been directly embroiled in the legal proceedings linked to his boss’s death from “acute effects of ketamine”. The 59-year-old has reportedly pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death and could yet be jailed for up to 15 years. He was allegedly taught by Plascencia how to inject Perry with the substance and reportedly administered it at least 27 times to Perry during the last five days of his life, including three final shots that prosecutors allege resulted in his “death and serious bodily injury”.
Fleming has also reportedly pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death, according to reports, while fellow doctor Mark Chavez has reportedly admitted to selling the drug to Plasencia and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute it.
“Hollywood seems like this glossy, sunny place but underneath that veneer is a really dark underbelly of ‘Doctor Feelgoods’ – the plastic surgeons and drug dealers who will prescribe and administer pills and drugs and whatever else for their rich and powerful clients,” says Sara Nathan, editor-at-large at The New York Post, who has written extensively about Perry. “Matthew’s death has highlighted an epidemic of ketamine use in LA. He was such a beloved star that as soon as the autopsy came out, LAPD detectives and the Drug Enforcement Agency have been trying to work out who supplied him with the ketamine that killed him. This is a high-profile case and they’ll want to set an example by punishing them.”
Where cocaine was once the drug of choice in Hollywood, ketamine use is now booming within that strata of society. Originally developed as an anaesthetic, and used on animals by vets and also in the Vietnam War, it later became popular as a club drug known as “Special K” for its hallucinogenic and dissociative effects. In recent years it has emerged as a tool for treating depression, PTSD and addiction, a process Perry wrote enthusiastically about in his book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Perry isn’t the only star to admit to using the drug. Elon Musk posted on X that he has a prescription for ketamine “for when my brain chemistry sometimes goes super negative”. Sharon Osbourne told People magazine that she underwent three months of ketamine therapy. And comedian Pete Davidson revealed during a comedy set that he had taken ketamine daily for four years before he checked himself into rehab.
While the illegal, “street” version of the drug is typically sold as a white powder, often cut with other substances, and snorted, in a clinical setting it is administered via injection or intravenous infusion.
Given LA’s obsession with wellness and the next big trend, it’s unsurprising that therapeutic ketamine clinics are now booming there, and treatment doesn’t come cheap. A one-hour ketamine infusion with a therapist costs around $700. Memberships for 12 sessions can cost in the region of $5,000. The profit to be made from these settings has led some unscrupulous people to set up unregulated practices with untrained staff.
Dr. David Mahjoubi opened the Ketamine Healing Clinic of Los Angeles in 2014. He says he’s seen a “blow up” of clinics and an increase in online sites that will deliver ketamine prescriptions directly to a patient’s home in the form of lozenges, nasal sprays and tablets. He has concerns that some companies are putting profit over patients’ health. 
“Someone would just open [a clinic] up and stick an untrained nurse in there and have them give [the patient] whatever dose in whatever duration,” he says. “It was quite distressing to see that being done incorrectly.”
But ketamine therapy isn’t just happening in La-La Land. In the UK, a small handful of specialist NHS centres provide ketamine injections to patients with depression. Many seeking therapy with the drug are therefore forced to turn to private providers.
Awakn, the UK’s first ketamine-therapy clinic, opened in Bristol in 2021. It closed in July of this year following low demand, but its sister clinic in London remains open and has been re-branded by a separate company called Klearwell. A course of low-dose treatments alongside talking therapy costs about £6,000.
“In its right dose and in the right setting, ketamine is very safe,” says Prof David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College, former government advisor and chief research officer at Awakn. “The deaths or injuries you see with it are normally to do with misadventure, when – like Perry – people take it and go into the water or spend too long outside. It’s very rare to overdose on it. But the problem is that it’s also a recreational drug and people self-medicate with it, and then they build up a tolerance to it,” he says.
“It’s important that deaths such as Perry’s don’t damn the whole field of ketamine for therapeutic purposes, because for some people, it’s a very effective treatment.”
Perry himself was convinced of its power for good. “Ketamine felt like a giant exhale,” he wrote in his memoir. “They’d bring me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me so I would listen to music, blindfold me, and put an IV in.” Indeed, Perry was such a fan of the drug’s therapeutic properties that he wanted to set up his own clinic. “He was telling me this [ketamine] is fantastic, he wanted to go into business with this one guy in Glendale, or somewhere in the Valley,” said a close friend who worked with Perry.
But although there are reputable clinics, there are also many people who hear about the medicinal uses of ketamine and are drawn into the black market to self-prescribe. And if you have the money, there are unscrupulous doctors who are willing to prescribe anything, as well as a network of high-end dealers who can facilitate any request.
“It’s clearly an abuse, and somebody should be responsible,” says a friend of Perry. “Matthew’s death could have been avoided. You cannot give an addict meds, they can’t control their urges.”