A major North Hollywood drug dealer who pleaded guilty to selling the ketamine that killed Matthew Perry was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
With the sentencing, Jasvin Sangha became the third defendant out of the five people who pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death to be sentenced to prison. It is the only one whose plea deal included an explicit admission of causing the overdose.
For years, Sangha ran a drug trafficking business out of her home in Los Angeles, marketing herself as an exclusive dealer who catered to high-profile Hollywood clients. According to court documents, she learned in 2023 that Perry was interested in ketamine through an acquaintance with the actor’s personal assistant. She offered a sample, and later supplied 50 vials, one of which killed Perry.
After hearing about the overdose, Sangha moved to destroy evidence implicating her in the crime, prosecutors said. She asked one of the co-conspirators to “delete all our messages,” according to court filings.
Prosecutors portrayed Sangha as an unrepentant drug dealer who “did not care” about Perry’s death and “continued to sell” even after it was discovered that the ketamine she had supplied to the actor may have killed him. They confirmed that she sold drugs to another man, Cody McIlroy, in 2019, which also caused his death. When law enforcement raided her home, they found more than 1.5 kilograms of compressed methamphetamine pills.
In court filings, Sangha rejected the portrayal of her as a large-scale drug dealer and that she did not cause the chain of events that ultimately led to Perry’s murder. She confirmed that she simply obtained the ketamine from a primary source and resold it.
Sangha pleaded guilty last year to five federal charges connected to Perry’s death: three counts of distributing ketamine; one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death; and one count of maintaining a drug-involved building.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Pace, who imposed the sentence, granted the government’s request for a 15-year prison sentence followed by three years of supervised release. Sangha faces a possible sentence of up to 65 years in prison.
Debbie Berry, the actor’s stepmother, urged the court in a victim impact statement to impose the maximum possible prison sentence. She wrote that Jasvin caused “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of pain that was “irreversible.” She added: “There is no joy” and “There is no light in the window.”
Last year, Salvador Plascencia, a doctor who pleaded guilty to charges related to supplying Perry with 20 vials of ketamine over a two-week period in the immediate period before Perry’s death, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Mark Chavez, who ran a ketamine clinic and sold the drug to Placencia, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and eight months of home confinement.
