Behind the smile of Matthew Perry, the unforgettable Chandler Bing in Friends, was a long battle against addictions. A vulnerability that some would have exploited, leading to his death in October 2023. On Wednesday, April 8, 2026, the American justice system decided, as reported by Midi Libre. Jasveen Sangha, known as the “queen of ketamine,” was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a California court. This drug trafficker was one of five people prosecuted in the case related to the actor’s death. At 54 years old, Matthew Perry was found unconscious in his jacuzzi.
The investigation revealed that he had received 27 ketamine injections in the three days before his death. According to federal prosecutor Martin Estrada, “the accused clearly took advantage of Mr. Perry’s vulnerabilities.” “These accused individuals took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction problems to enrich themselves,” he stated. Among those involved were two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, with the latter pleading guilty, as well as Erik Fleming, an acquaintance of the actor, and his assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, who administered the doses.
Matthew Perry’s Exploited Addiction
At the heart of the case is the accusation that Jasveen Sangha provided the substances that led to the tragedy. She initially tried to distance herself, even asking an intermediary to erase traces of their exchanges after the actor’s death, before eventually pleading guilty in August 2025. Her involvement does not stop there. As reported by People, she admitted to selling ketamine to a 33-year-old man in 2019, who died of an overdose shortly after. In court, Matthew Perry’s family expressed their ongoing pain. In a statement published by People, his stepmother called for an exemplary punishment, one that would “condemn this woman without mercy to the maximum prison sentence so that she can no longer harm other families like ours.”
Matthew Perry Facing the Difficulty of Battling His Demons
She also described the devastating consequences of his death. “The suffering you have inflicted on hundreds, if not thousands of people, is irreversible […] There is no more joy. No light in the window. They will not return,” she emotionally stated before directly accusing the trafficker: “You are responsible for all of this. You have enough business sense to make money, you chose the one solution that harms people.”
While the public remembers him as a funny and endearing character, Matthew Perry himself had shared his demons in his autobiography “Friends, Loves, and this Terrible Thing,” published in 2022. Addicted to painkillers and alcohol, he had long tried to regain control, but his vulnerabilities, even visible in the physical transformations of his character on screen, never completely disappeared. The conviction of Jasveen Sangha brings a semblance of justice, even if it does not heal the wounds left by the actor’s death.
