Drug counsellor who delivered the fatal dose of ketamine to actor Matthew Perry is up for sentencing

Matthew Perry poses for a portrait in New York on Feb. 17, 2015. (Photo by Brian Ach/Invision/AP, File)

LOS ANGELES — A licensed drug addiction counsellor who delivered “Friends” star Matthew Perry the doses of ketamine that killed him is set to be sentenced on Wednesday.

Prosecutors are asking for 2 1/2 years in prison for 56-year-old Erik Fleming, one of five people who pleaded guilty in connection with the actor’s 2023 death in the Jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home. Fleming connected Perry to Jasveen Sangha, the convicted drug dealer who prosecutors called “The Ketamine Queen.” She was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison.

Defense lawyers are asking for a sentence of three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility, saying in a sentencing memo that Fleming “has gone to extreme lengths to atone for his criminal conduct.”

Fleming gave up Sangha to investigators as soon as they contacted him and in August 2024 became the first defendant to plead guilty, admitting to one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. That was before arrests in the case were even announced.

He will be the fourth defendant in the case to be sentenced in the Los Angeles federal courtroom of Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett. It will be his first court appearance since his role became public knowledge.

Prosecutors said in their sentencing memo that while Fleming’s exceptional cooperation should bring a lighter sentence, his role as a drug counselor who “deliberately undertook to sell illegal street drugs to a victim who had a public, well-documented battle with drug addiction” should count against him, even if Perry wasn’t one of his regular clients.

Perry had been receiving ketamine treatments for depression — an increasingly common off-label use.

A few weeks before his death, Perry was seeking more of the drug than he could get through doctors and asked a friend to help him get more. She was in a treatment facility, so introduced Perry to Fleming. He was a former film and television producer whose career had been ravaged by addiction. He got sober and became a drug counselor, but had relapsed after the 2023 death of a beloved stepmother who had rescued him from a traumatic childhood, his lawyers said.

Fleming would get ketamine from Sangha, mark up the price to make a profit, and deliver it to Perry’s house where he sold it to the actor’s live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa.

“I procured ketamine for Matthew Perry because I wanted the money and because I thought I was doing a favor for a friend,” Fleming said in a letter to the court. “I never contemplated the worst possible outcome. This grievous failure will haunt me forever.”

His deliveries included 25 vials for $6,000 four days before Perry’s death.

Iwamasa would inject Perry from that batch on Oct. 28, 2023, and hours later he found the actor dead. A medical examiner’s report found that Perry died from the acute effects of ketamine, a surgical anesthetic, and drowning was a secondary cause.

Fleming can technically get 25 years in prison, but it’s very unlikely it will be anywhere near that much.

His lawyers say he has undergone a “transformative” rehabilitation since Perry’s death.

“I will accept my punishment with humility and spend the rest of my life working to become worthy of forgiveness,” Fleming’s letter said.

Iwamasa is the last defendant to be sentenced in two weeks.

Perry, who died at 54, became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” NBC’s culture-changing sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

An auction of his valuables including “Friends” memorabilia will go to benefit the foundation founded in his name soon after his death.

Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press