By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES, Dec 3 (Reuters) – A California doctor was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison on Wednesday for illegally supplying “Friends” sitcom star Matthew Perry with ketamine, the powerful sedative that caused the actor’s drug overdose death in 2023.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 44, who ran an urgent-care clinic outside Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in federal court in July to four felony counts of illegal distribution of the prescription anesthetic. He could have faced up to 40 years in prison for the crime.
Perry was found by his live-in assistant floating face down and lifeless in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023. He was 54. An autopsy report concluded the actor died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” which combined with other factors in causing the actor to lose consciousness and drown.
Ketamine is a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties that is sometimes prescribed to treat depression and other psychiatric disorders. It also has seen widespread abuse as an illicit party drug.
Plasencia, who surrendered his medical license in September, admitted as part of his plea agreement that in the weeks before Perry’s death he had injected the actor with ketamine on multiple occasions at the actor’s home and once in the back seat of a parked car.
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse, including the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s NBC television series “Friends.”
According to federal law enforcement officials, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions for treatment of depression and anxiety at a clinic where he became addicted to the drug.
When doctors there refused to increase his dosage, he turned to unscrupulous providers elsewhere willing to exploit Perry’s drug dependency as a way to make quick money, authorities said.
Plasencia, who practiced medicine in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, said he was introduced to Perry through a patient acquainted with the doctor and obtained the ketamine from another doctor, co-defendant Mark Chavez of San Diego. According to court filings, Plasencia once texted Chavez about Perry, writing, “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”
Within weeks, Perry was dead from an overdose of ketamine supplied by yet another co-defendant – a drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen” – and injected by the actor’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa.
“You and others helped Mr. Perry stay on the road to such an ending while continuing to feed his addiction,” U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said before sentencing Plasencia to 30 months in prison and a $5,600 fine.
Addressing the court before the judge imposed sentence on Wednesday, amid audible sobs from his mother and Perry’s relatives, Plasencia expressed remorse and said he took full responsibility for his actions.
“I failed Mr. Perry, I failed his family, and I failed the community,” he said, before turning to directly face members of Perry’s family seated in the courtroom and adding, “I’m just so sorry.”
Delivering a victim impact statement earlier in the proceeding, Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, said, “There is an oath that doctors take, and I think it really got forgotten.” Looking directly at Plasencia, she said, “I want you to see this is the mother” and added “this was a bad thing to do.”
Four other defendants – Chavez, 55, Iwamasa, 60, Jasveen Sangha, 42, aka “Ketamine Queen,” and go-between dealer Erik Fleming, 56 – have pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death and are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Gregorio and Lincoln Feast.)
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