Doctors and Matthew Perry’s assistant charged in actor’s ketamine overdose death (2024)

Five people have been arrested and charged with providing Friends star Matthew Perry with the ketamine that killed him last October, authorities said on Thursday.

At a press conference, US Attorney E. Martin Estrada said the suspects include Perry’s personal assistant, two doctors, and a North Hollywood woman known as “the Ketamine Queen.”

According to an indictment unsealed in Los Angeles federal court, Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, and an acquaintance of Perry’s, Erik Fleming, worked with two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, to procure large quantities of ketamine for Perry in the period leading up to his overdose death. However, “Ketamime Queen” Jasveen Sangha is charged with supplying Perry with the ketamine doses that ultimately caused his demise, Estrada said.

Plasencia saw Perry, 54, as a cash cow, the indictment suggests, citing text messages he sent to Chavez about a month before the actor’s death. “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” he wrote in one. “Let’s find out,” he wrote in another.

In a third text to Chavez, Plasencia described meeting Perry as “like a bad movie.”

Plasencia administered ketamine to Perry at times, in one visit shooting him up with 360 milligrams of the drug over the course of an hour, the indictment states. Plasencia also taught Iwamasa how to inject Perry with ketamine, leaving the drug and a supply of syringes behind for him in exchange for $4,500, according to the indictment. At the beginning of October 2023, the indictment says Iwamasa texted Plasencia an order for eight vials of ketamine, referring to them as “8 bottles of dr pepper.”

On October 12 last year, Plasencia injected Perry with “a large dose of ketamine” that unexpectedly caused the actor to “freeze up,” and spiked his blood pressure, rattling the doctor, according to the indictment. When Plasencia began having supply issues, Perry’s go-betweens branched out to Sangha, who said she had a “master chef” cooking up ketamine for her, the indictment states. And since Perry bought a lot of her product, Sangha provided him with ketamine lollipops as an “add-on,” the indictment states.

In the days leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa administered at least 15 shots of ketamine to him, all of which were supplied by Sangha, according to the indictment. It says Iwamasa gave Perry the final three doses of ketamine purchased from Sangha, using needles provided by Plasencia, on October 28, 2023, the date the actor was found dead in his hot tub.

Later that same day, the indictment says Sangha messaged Fleming on Signal, writing: “Delete all our messages.”

Law enforcement agencies executed search warrants and seized computers, phones and other electronic equipment to determine who was responsible for the supply of the drug which led to the actor’s overdose.

After a medical examiner ruled his death an accident last year, Perry’s passing was considered a closed case.

But almost seven months later an investigation, at both federal and local level, had been opened into who supplied the Friends actor with the ketamine which caused his death.

The investigation into how Perry came to have so much ketamine involved the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the LAPD confirmed in May.

An early toxicology report in December 2023 confirmed that Perry had died from “acute effects of ketamine”, which caused him to drown in the heated waters. Sources close to the actor said he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety.

His autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of the drug in Perry’s blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.

Yet his last infusion therapy was one and a half weeks before his death. The coroner noted that the ketamine in Perry’s system “could not be from that infusion therapy, since ketamine’s half-life is three to four hours, or less”.

The showbiz world was plunged into sadness when Perry’s death was revealed last year. The star had played Chandler Bing, a character known for his dry and witty retorts.

Following the news, his five co-stars – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow – released a joint statement asking for time to “process this unfathomable loss”.

They wrote: “We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.

“In time we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.”