Among the five people arrested in the Matthew Perry overdose death investigation were a local physician and the actor’s live-in assistant. Then there was Erik Fleming, listed as the TV star’s “acquaintance,” and charged as a middleman in the deadly ketamine scheme.
The Department of Justice described Fleming’s activities as that of a drug dealer, coordinating with Perry’s assistant and Jasveen Sangha, the so-called “Ketamine Queen.” According to the DOJ, “after discussing prices with [co-defendant Kenneth] Iwamasa, Fleming coordinated the drug sales with Sangha, and brought cash from Iwamasa to Sangha’s stash house in North Hollywood to buy vials of ketamine.” On October 24, 2023, four days before Perry’s death, Fleming at one point informed the assistant that the ketamine was “on its way to our girl,” in reference to Sangha.
Fleming, 54, pled guilty on Aug. 8 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. He admitted to distributing 50 vials of ketamine, half of them four days before Perry’s death. Fleming faces up to 25 years in his federal case.
Fleming didn’t respond to The Hollywood Reporter’s request for comment.
While Fleming is listed in the DOJ filing as being “of Hawthorne,” there was a time when he was more actively of Hollywood. He was once a director — Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes starred in his 1999 children’s fantasy comedy My Brother the Pig — and he produced the first season of reality show The Surreal Life in 2003, which featured Cory Feldman, Gabrielle Carteris, Vince Neil and MC Hammer. Fleming produced Tyrone, a 1999 road trip movie starring Coolio and Entourage‘s Kevin Connolly.
Fleming also co-ran the production company Rich Hippie with Sydney Holland, one of the two Sumner Redstone live-in girlfriends who ended up with tens of millions of dollars before his death and whose legal theatrics led to the ViacomCBS merger and, arguably, Paramount Global’s more recent woes. (She’s since decamped for San Diego.)
The ailing media mogul reportedly spent an unspecified amount funding Rich Hippie, according to a Redstone legal complaint in 2016. Fleming became president of production in 2013.
“With his creative vision, experience and extensive contacts,” Holland, then identifying as CEO, told THR at the time, “he is incredibly capable of executing our mission to develop and produce thoughtful and entertaining, quality projects that appeal to a broad range of audiences.” Yet Rich Hippie never materialized many such productions. Its most notable announced venture, about a Native American community’s reckoning with drug culture, which they executive produced alongside Natalie Portman, had a tiny theatrical release and a paltry gross.
