A California doctor has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for selling ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry — the first criminal conviction over the death of the actor, who was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in October 2023.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 44, who ran an urgent-care clinic in Malibu, California, was one of five people federally charged after the 54-year-old Perry, who played Chandler Bing in the hit NBC show from 1994 to 2004, died of a drug overdose.
During an emotion-charged hearing on Wednesday, Plasencia turned to Perry’s family and directly apologized for his role in the star’s tragic end, telling them: “I am just so sorry.”
Plasencia repeatedly wiped his brow throughout, as he told the court how he would one day have to explain his role to his young son.
“I failed to protect a mother’s son. I failed Mr. Perry, I failed his family and I failed myself,” the disgraced doctor said.
Plasencia, who had been due to go on trial in August before reaching a plea deal, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in Los Angeles federal court. He pleaded guilty on July 23 to four counts of distribution of ketamine.
He was not charged with selling the dose that actually caused Perry’s death.
In sentencing him to 30 months behind bars, with a $5,600 fine, Judge Garnett scolded Plasencia for breaking his oath as a doctor but said her sentence would not be based on “public opinion.”
“It does not feel like a caring doctor/patient relationship; it feels like selling drugs for profit,” she told him.
And she added: ”You took an oath to do no harm, but you did harm.”
“You exploited Mr Perry’s addiction for your own profit, to the tune of $55,000. You and others helped Mr Perry to stay on the road to such an ending by helping to feed his ketamine addiction.”
Investigators say that Perry was found dead in his hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023, by his personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who was the person who injected the actor with the ketamine that led to his death.
Court documents stated that Iwamasa had no medical training and “knew little if anything” about administering controlled substances.
Prosecutors say that in the four days leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa gave him more than 20 shots of ketamine, with three on the actual day he died.
In December 2023, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office declared that Perry passed away from the “acute effects of ketamine.”
The autopsy report also cited drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, which is a drug used to treat opioid use disorder, as contributing to his death.
During the hearing, Perry’s mother, Suzanne, told the court that her son had been “one of the strongest men” she had ever known, despite his health issues.
“I used to think that he could not die, he would not die, he would rise out of the most critical situations. You would get a phone call that he had made it through the night and that he would be okay.”
She went on to criticize doctors giving patients drugs, “destroying people, destroying human beings.”
She also slammed Plasencia’s description in a text message of her son as a “moron.”
“This is my boy. I knew how addicted he was year after year. But he survived it all only to be handed stuff and called a moron. There was nothing moronic about him.”
And she finally told Plasencia, who was immediately taken into custody after his sentencing: “This was a bad thing you did.”
Prosecutors say that Perry had used ketamine to treat depression and had received ketamine infusion therapy from doctors. But it is claimed the actor began getting the drug from dealers when his doctors refused to prescribe him more doses.
US Attorney Ian Yanniello told the court that Plasencia had “taken advantage” of Perry’s “severe addiction” for his own “profit motive.”
“This is not medical treatment; it is drug dealing. He was a drug dealer in a white coat.”
And the prosecutor added: “The unfortunate truth about humanity is that there will always be people who take advantage of the vulnerable. We do not expect these predators to be wearing white coats.”
After the sentencing, Plasencia’s attorneys, Karen L. Goldstein and Debra S. White, released a statement saying that their client, “accepts the Court’s sentence today with humility and deep remorse.”
"He was a good doctor loved by those he treated. He is not a villain. He is someone who made serious mistakes in his treatment decisions involving the off-label use of ketamine — a drug commonly used for depression that does not have uniform standards," they said. "The mistakes he made over the 13 days during which he treated Mr. Perry will stay with him forever."
The Department of Justice claims that an underground criminal network took advantage of Perry by illegally selling him ketamine.
Perry had spoken openly about his struggle with addiction and detailed it in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing.
In it, he wrote that he started abusing prescription medication after a jet ski accident on the set of the movie Fools Rush In in 1997, for which he was prescribed Vicodin.
Dr. Mark Chavez, a San Diego doctor, admitted in a plea agreement that he obtained ketamine from his former clinic and from a wholesale distributor where he submitted a fraudulent prescription. He is due to be sentenced later this month.
Chavez admitted that he sold ketamine to Plasencia, whom he has known for at least 20 years. He said that he understood the drug was being sold to Perry.
Plasencia, who now lives in Arizona with his wife and 2-year-old son, had faced trial alongside “Ketamine Queen” Jasveen Sangha, who was accused of selling Perry the dose of ketamine that killed him.
Prosecutors had recommended a 36-month sentence, saying that he “sought to exploit Perry's medical vulnerability for profit.”
They added: ”Indeed, the day defendant met Perry, he made his profit motive known, telling a co-conspirator: 'I wonder how much this moron will pay' and 'let's find out.’”
Plasencia’s lawyers had requested a one-day sentence, with credit for time already served, and three years of supervised release.
Sangha, of North Hollywood, allegedly charged Perry $50,000 for around 50 vials of the drug. Prosecutors describe her as a drug trafficker who knew the ketamine she distributed could be deadly.
Her home is described as a “drug-selling emporium” where more than 80 vials of ketamine were allegedly found along with thousands of pills that included methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax.
Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal criminal charges, including that she provided the ketamine that ultimately resulted in Perry’s fatal overdose.
Erik Fleming, 54, of Hawthorne, pleaded guilty on August 8 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death, admitting that he distributed the ketamine that killed Perry, prosecutors said. He is set to be sentenced in January.
Iwamasa pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and will be sentenced in January.
