A licensed drug addiction counsellor who delivered Friends star Matthew Perry the doses of ketamine that killed him has been jailed for two years.
Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 56-year-old Erik Fleming in a federal court in Los Angeles.
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 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, and Wednesday was his first court appearance since his role became public knowledge.
Prosecutors said in a sentencing memo before the hearing that while Fleming’s exceptional cooperation should bring a lighter sentence, 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 was not one of his regular clients.
They had asked for two and a half years in prison.
Defence lawyers had asked for a sentence of three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility, saying in their sentencing memo that Fleming "has gone to extreme lengths to atone for his criminal conduct".
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.
"I procured ketamine for Matthew Perry because I wanted the money and because I thought I was doing a favour 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 28 October 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 benefit the foundation founded in his name after his death.
Source: PA
