Prosecutors have said that in 2019, Sangha sold ketamine to a man called Cody McLaury.
McLaury experienced an overdose and died. Following his death, his sister texted Sangha to tell her that the drugs she had sold her brother had killed him.
“At that point, any sensible person would have gone to law enforcement, and certainly any person with any semblance of a heart would stop their activities and not further distribute ketamine to others,” says Martin Estrada, the former chief prosecutor for the Central District of California, who announced federal charges against Sangha in August 2024.
“She continued doing this, and we saw, several years later, the continuation of her conduct resulted in the death of yet another person, Mr Perry.”
Another friend from a different circle who used to go to clubs with Sangha in the 2010s recalls being similarly surprised by the news.
He told the BBC he had known Sangha since high school, and socialised extensively with her at the same time as Marquez.
The friend did not want to be named, so he could talk candidly about the woman he knew who is now “being accused of being a drug lord”.
“We were always at parties, like every night. For many, many years,” he says. “She never offered me anything.”
He recalls that Sangha took her uncle Paul Sing with her almost everywhere she went. “It’s not really drug lord behaviour,” he says. “[And] it wasn’t like she just let him tag along. He was always dressed fashionable.”
Paul Sing appears in event photos with Sangha, and was present in court to hear her plead guilty on 3 September.
At some point in the 2020s, Sangha attended rehab, according to Marquez. In court filings last month, her lawyer Mark Geragos claimed she had been sober for 17 months. In her last conversation with Mr Negandhi, they spoke about the future.
“We were both into our 40s, and you tend to self evaluate when we get to that age. And, you start thinking, what is it that we want to do now that we’ve hit this age?” he says.
“She was very excited about being clean for quite some time and she was just looking forward to a lot of things in life.”
Sangha didn’t mention that she had recently been arrested.
“I had no idea that she was going through all of this when we were talking,” he says. “She hadn’t revealed any of it.”
