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LOS ANGELES (CN) — A drug addiction counselor, who was himself a drug addict, was sentenced to two years in federal prison on Wednesday for supplying Matthew Perry with ketamine in the days leading up to the actor’s death in October 2023 as a result of his drug use.
Erik Fleming, 56, received a more lenient sentence than the “Ketamine Queen” — who was the source of the ketamine that killed Perry and who got 15 years in prison — because he started cooperating with law enforcement early on.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett rejected Fleming’s bid to be sentenced to just one year, of which he’d serve three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility, noting that the reduction he received for his cooperation was appropriate given that he didn’t give information to the government until months after Perry’s death when law enforcement caught up with him.
The judge, a Joe Biden appointee, said she found Fleming somewhat less culpable than the doctor who had personally injected Perry with ketamine, for which there had been no medical need, and whom she sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison last year.
Fleming expresses his remorse at the hearing in downtown Los Angeles that was attended by several members of Perry’s family. Unlike at previous sentencings of people charged in the actor’s death, the family didn’t make any statements in court.
Fleming told the judge that he was jobless, broke and using drugs when in October of 2023 he agreed to help out a friend who had been supplying Perry with ketamine but was unable to do so because she was in rehab herself.
“I’m still in disbelieve that I let myself get involved,” he said. “I’m haunted by the mistakes I’ve made.”
His attorney, Robert Dugdale, argued that his client’s cooperation enabled federal prosecutors to zero in on Jasveen Sangha, aka the Ketamine Queen, who he said was a major trafficker who had been operating a drug house for a decade unbeknownst to law enforcement.
“They didn’t have a clue who she was until that day,” Dugdale said.
The government had sought a sentence of 30 months in person.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Haoxiaohan Cai said that Fleming was a licensed drug and alcohol abuse counselor who knew at the time that Perry was someone who was vulnerable and should be steered away from drugs.
Nevertheless, she argued, Fleming on several occasions obtained ketamine from Sangha without knowing it was a safe product, marked up the price of the drugs he delivered to Perry’s personal assistance and continued to sell ketamine when he knew the actor was burning through his supply at a rapid pace.
The prosecutor also pointed out that Fleming only began cooperating after law enforcement executed a search warrant at his sister’s house where he was living in March of 2024 and that until then he had tried to conceal his involvement and had told Sangha that they could pin the blame on Perry’s assistant.
The 54-year-old Perry, who rose to fame in the 1990s as one of the cast of the “Friends” sitcom, had been battling drug addiction for years before he was found dead in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home in 2023.
He had been routinely doing ketamine in the months before he died — the final dose was injected by Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s assistant who has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
Iwamasa is the last defendant still awaiting sentencing in the criminal investigation of Perry’s death.
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