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 on Wednesday.
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.