LOS ANGELES (AP) — The wide-ranging prosecution of those involved in the death of “Friends” star Matthew Perry has come to a close with the sentencing of his personal assistant, the last of the five people who pleaded guilty to playing various roles in supplying the actor with ketamine, the drug that killed him at age 54 on October 28, 2023.
Here’s a look at each defendant.
Kenneth Iwamasa
Perry’s 60-year-old live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa was intimately involved in the actor’s illegal ketamine use, acting as his drug messenger and personally giving him injections — six to eight per day in the last days of his life — according to his plea agreement.
Iwamasa, a longtime friend, was hired for the $150,000-a-year job because those surrounding Perry trusted him to help with the actor’s sobriety. But he ended up being the actor’s chief enabler.
“Shoot me up with a big one,” Iwamasa told authorities Perry said to him on the last day of his life. After several injections, Iwamasa left him at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and returned to find Perry dead in his hot tub. An autopsy found the primary cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning as a secondary cause.
Iwamasa made nearly all of the illegal drug buys on Perry’s behalf, working in coordination with his co-defendants. One of them, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, taught him how to give Perry the injections.
Iwamasa at first lied about his role and destroyed evidence, but months later became the first to reach a plea deal and became prosecutors’ most important informant.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: One count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
SENTENCE: Three years and five months in prison.
WHAT THEY SAID: “Kenny at all times acted at the direction of Mr. Perry. Obtained ketamine at the direction of Mr. Perry. Administered ketamine to Mr. Perry at his direction,” defense lawyer Alan Eisner said after sentencing. “And as his employee, Kenny wishes he could have had the strength to push back and say no.”
Jasveen Sangha
Prosecutors say she was known as “The Ketamine Queen,” because of her jet-setting, drug-dealing lifestyle. Her lawyers say authorities made up that nickname to feed a media frenzy.
Jasveen Sangha admitted to running a significant drug operation, selling Perry the dose of ketamine that he took on the day he died, and causing the death of another man, 33-year-old Cody McLaury, in 2019.
Like the other defendants, Sangha had no previous convictions.
But, prosecutors said, and a judge agreed, that unlike the other defendants whose actions were atypical, she had been dealing drugs including ketamine, methamphetamine and cocaine for at least five years from her home.
Sangha, 42, was born in Britain, raised in the United States and has dual citizenship. Her social media accounts showed her in posh spaces alongside rich-and-famous faces in Spain, Japan and Dubai, London and Los Angeles.
She went to high school in Calabasas, California — perhaps best known as home to the Kardashians — and went to college at the University of California, Irvine, graduating in 2005 and going to work at Merrill Lynch. She later got an MBA from the Hult International Business School in London.
Her lawyers presented that personal history as evidence that she was an otherwise upstanding citizen, but prosecutors used the same facts to argue she didn’t need to sell drugs but did so for greed and glamour.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: Three counts of distribution of ketamine, one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury, and one count of using her home for drug distribution.
SENTENCE: 15 years in prison, more than all the other defendants combined.
WHAT THEY SAID: “These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Sangha said at sentencing, adding that her choices had “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends.”
Erik Fleming
Fleming, 56, was working as a drug addiction counselor when a mutual friend he had with Perry told him that the actor was seeking ketamine, according to filings from prosecutors.
He was a former television and film producer whose career had been ravaged by substance abuse, and that after gaining hard-won sobriety, he became a counselor.
But he had badly relapsed when approached about Perry, and connected the actor with Sangha to buy her product.
In all, prosecutors say, Fleming delivered 50 vials of Sangha’s ketamine for Perry’s use, marking up the price to make a profit, including 25 vials sold for $6,000 to the actor four days before his death.
Authorities found him fairly early in the investigation using information from Iwamasa. He cooperated with prosecutors, giving up Sangha and becoming the first to appear in court and enter a guilty plea.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: One count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
SENTENCE: Two years in prison.
WHAT THEY SAID: “This grievous failure will haunt me forever,” Fleming wrote in a letter to the court. After he was sentenced, he said: “I want to do everything I can to make sure a tragedy like this never happens again. I don’t want anyone to die from ketamine.”
Dr. Salvador Plasencia
“I wonder how much this moron will pay?”
That was a text message Plasencia sent to a fellow doctor when he learned Perry was looking for illegal, off-the-books ketamine, according to a plea agreement where the doctor admitted to selling 20 vials of the drug to the actor in the weeks before his death.
Plasencia, a 44-year-old Los Angeles-area doctor known to patients as “Dr. P,” was one of the main targets of the prosecution and had been headed for a joint trial with Sangha when he reached the plea agreement last year.
Perry was connected to Plasencia through another patient. The actor had been getting ketamine legally from his regular doctor as treatment for depression, an off-label but increasingly common use of the surgical anesthetic. But he wanted more than that doctor would prescribe.
Plasencia admitted to injecting Perry with some of the initial vials he provided, and left more for Iwamasa to inject, despite the fact that Perry froze up and his blood pressure spiked after a dose.
Plasencia graduated from UCLA’s medical school in 2010 and had not been subject to any medical disciplinary actions before the Perry case. He voluntarily gave up his medical license before any action was taken against.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: Four counts of distribution of ketamine.
SENTENCE: 2 1/2 years in prison.
WHAT THEY SAID: Plasencia cried at his sentencing as he imagined the day he would have to tell his 2-year-old son “about the time I didn’t protect another mother’s son. It hurts me so much.”
Dr. Mark Chavez
Chavez, a San Diego doctor who ran a ketamine clinic, was the source of the doses that Plasencia sold to Perry.
Chavez admitted to obtaining the ketamine from a wholesale distributor on false pretenses and passing it along.
Chavez, 55, graduated from UCLA’s medical school in 2004. He has surrendered his medical license.
CHARGE: One count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
SENTENCE: Eight months of home confinement.
WHAT THEY SAID: “I just want to say my heart goes out to the Perry family,” Chavez said at sentencing.
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Versions of this story previously ran on Aug. 15, 2024, Sept. 3, 2025 and May 13, 2026.
