Matthew Perry’s drug counsellor gets two years in prison

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

LOS ANGELES -- -- A licensed drug addiction counsellor who delivered “Friends” star Matthew Perry the doses of ketamine that killed him was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.

Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 56-year-old Erik Fleming in a U.S. federal court in Los Angeles.

“It’s truly a nightmare I can’t wake up from,” Fleming told the judge before the sentence. “I’m haunted by the mistakes I made.” He wore a black suit and spoke at the podium with a deep, somber voice.

A judge ordered Fleming, who has been free on bond for about two years, to turn himself in to serve his term in 45 days. He was also sentenced to three years of probation.

Fleming was the fourth defendant sentenced of the five who have pleaded guilty in prosecutions over the actor’s 2023 death in the Jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home. Fleming connected Perry to Jasveen Sangha, the convicted drug who dealer prosecutors called “The Ketamine Queen.” She was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison.

Fleming gave up Sangha to investigators the same day they found him at his sister’s house, where he was sleeping on the couch several months after Perry’s death. He became the first defendant to plead guilty in August 2024, admitting to one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. That was before arrests in the case were even announced, and Wednesday was his first court appearance since his role became public knowledge.

His attorney Robert Dugdale told the judge he “handed over the Ketamine Queen on a silver platter.”

“They didn’t have a clue who she was before that day,” Dugdale said.

He would have gotten about four years in prison if it weren’t for his co-operation, according to federal sentencing guidelines.

The prosecution said he deserved credit for doing the right thing, but argued that he did so only when confronted and cornered by authorities.

“Mr. Fleming didn’t co-operate because he had a benevolent motive, or because he wanted justice for Mr. Perry,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello said. “He wanted to save himself.”

The judge also pointed out that Fleming didn’t come forward in the months after Perry’s death, that he didn’t create new evidence by making phone calls to co-conspirators or anything similar, and that the information he provided might have been obtained anyway simply through the seizure of his phone.

But all agreed that he sped up and smoothed the investigation with his co-operation.

Prosecutors said in a sentencing memo that his role as a drug counsellor 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.

Defence lawyers emphasized that he had no criminal record and repeatedly pointed out that he only spent 11 days of his life dealing drugs and to a single customer.

They had asked for a sentence of three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility.

Fleming said his great remorse “can’t compare to the agony I’ve caused” to Perry’s family and friends.

He and his lawyers also highlighted what they called his extraordinary work towards rehabilitation, spending 20 months sober and helping to establish a sober living home. After the hearing, he hugged several friends who were in the courtroom to support him.

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 counsellor, 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.

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.

Iwamasa is set to be the last defendant 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 after his death.

Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press