Matthew Perry Drug Dealer Gets 2 Years in Prison: ‘I’m Haunted by the Mistakes I Made’

The man who connected Matthew Perry with “Ketamine Queen” Jasveen Sangha and personally delivered 51 vials of ketamine to the Friends actor’s assistant, including the dose that resulted in Perry’s death in his backyard jacuzzi, was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday.

“I am haunted by the mistakes I made,” Erick Fleming told the court before hearing his fate. “I’m profoundly ashamed of myself and the pain I caused. If there was any way I could bring Mr. Perry back and undo what I did, of course I would.”

Federal prosecutors had recommended a 30-month prison sentence, far less than the 15-year term Sangha received from the same judge last month. Prosecutors said Fleming deserved leniency because he “expediently accepted responsibility and agreed to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation” once he was confronted by law enforcement.

Fleming pleaded guilty on Aug. 8, 2024, to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distributing ketamine resulting in death. As he left the courthouse on Wednesday, Fleming said he accepted his punishment. “I’m dreadfully sorry for the pain I caused the family. It’s what hurts me the most,” he said as reporters trailed him down the courthouse steps. “I did it, and I own it, and I deserve the consequence, and I got a consequence.”

Fleming, 56, had asked the court for mercy, seeking a 12-month “split sentence” of three months in prison followed by nine months in a locked residential drug treatment program. The USC graduate, former television showrunner, and licensed addiction counselor told the court he never sold street drugs before agreeing to procure ketamine for Perry. He said he was struggling with his own relapse at the time and was unemployed, broke, and desperate for money. (In a court filing, his lawyers said he received less than $2,000 in “logistical fees” tied to the three transactions connected to Perry.)

Perry, best known for his role playing Chandler Bing on Friends, died on Oct. 28, 2023. He was found lifeless in the outdoor jacuzzi at his home in the tony Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. His autopsy determined he died from the acute effects of ketamine. He was 54.

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Prosecutors ultimately charged five people: Fleming, Sangha, Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, and two doctors who admitted supplying Perry with large quantities of liquid ketamine in the weeks before Fleming and Sangha became involved. Dr. Salvador Plasencia was sentenced to 30 months in prison last December, while Dr. Mark Chavez was given eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said Wednesday that while Fleming deserved some leniency for cooperating with prosecutors, she was mindful that he did not come forward until authorities arrived at his door months after Perry’s death. The judge said she viewed Fleming as similarly situated to Dr. Plasencia because both sought to supply a known addict. But she noted that Plasencia “actually taught Mr. Iwamasa how to administer the ketamine, provided syringes, and actually administered the ketamine on at least one occasion where he watched Mr. Perry seize up.”

As part of the sentence, the judge also ordered Fleming to serve three years of supervised release. She ordered him to surrender to prison officials no later than noon on June 29.

In his letter to the court, Fleming said he struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine and was actively relapsing when he received a text from a friend in October 2023 saying Perry was looking for ketamine. Using a pseudonym for the friend, Fleming said the woman had “married a rich and famous crack cocaine addict” in 2008 before the couple later welcomed twins.
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His defense lawyers told the court that Fleming immediately confessed when confronted by authorities and turned over incriminating text messages from his cellphone that later led to Sangha’s arrest. Both Fleming and Iwamasa, who admitted he injected Perry at least three times on the morning of his death, took plea deals before the case was unsealed in August 2024, the day Sangha was arrested.
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According to evidence revealed in court filings, shortly after Perry’s fatal overdose, Sangha called Fleming on Signal and updated the settings on her encrypted messaging apps to automatically wipe their messages. She also instructed Fleming to “delete all our messages,” forensic evidence revealed. He preserved the messages.

Iwamasa, who was the first to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty on Aug. 7, 2024, to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. He is due to be sentenced on May 27.