Matthew Perry appears at the premiere of "Ride" in Los Angeles on April 28, 2015.Rich Fury/The Canadian Press
A prosecutor says five people have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry’s death from a ketamine overdose last year, including the actor’s assistant and two doctors.
U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges Thursday, saying the doctors supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine and even wondered in a text message how much the former “Friends” star would be willing to pay.
“These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong,” Estrada said.
Perry died in October due to a ketamine overdose and received several injections of the drug on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant. The assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, is the one who found Perry dead later that day.
The actor went to the two charged doctors in desperation after his regular doctors refused to give him ketamine in the amounts he wanted. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in one instance the actor paid $2,000 for a vial of ketamine that cost one of the physicians about $12.
Two of the people, including one of the doctors charged, were arrested Thursday, Estrada said. Two of the defendants, including Iwamasa, have pleaded guilty to charges already, and a third person has agreed to plead guilty.
Multiple messages left seeking comment from lawyers or offices for all the defendants have not yet been returned.
Among those arrested Thursday are Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who is charged with seven counts of distribution of ketamine and also two charges related to allegations he falsified records after Perry’s death.
Plasencia appeared in court briefly Thursday afternoon and pleaded not guilty. He can be released after posting a $100,000 bond.
Plasencia’s attorney Stefan Sacks asked that his client be allowed to keep seeing patients at his practice when he’s released, saying he had already turned over his DEA license to prescribe dangerous drugs and that the Perry case was “isolated.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian V. Yanniello objected, saying Plasencia had “essentially acted as a street corner drug dealer.”
Magistrate Judge Alka Sagar ruled that Plasencia could treat patients only if they sign a document saying they had been informed of the charges against him.
“Ultimately, Dr. Plasencia was operating with what he thought were the best of medical intentions” and that his actions “certainly didn’t rise to the level of criminal misconduct,” Sacks said outside the courthouse. “His only concern was to give the best medical treatment and to do no harm,” Sacks said. “Unfortunately harm was done. But it was after his involvement.”
Reputed dealer Jasveen Sangha, also known as ‘Ketamine Queen,’ denied bond
The other person arrested Thursday is Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors described as a drug dealer known to customers as the “Ketamine Queen.” Ketamine supplied by Sangha caused Perry’s death, authorities said.
She pleaded not guilty in a first appearance Thursday and was denied bond. Sagar ruled she should remain in custody due to concern over prosectors’ contentions that she destroyed evidence and has used money from drug sales to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Plasencia could get up to 120 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said, and Sangha could get life in prison.
Records show Plascencia’s medical license has been in good standing with no records of complaints, though it is set to expire in October.
A San Diego physician, Dr. Mark Chavez, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Prosecutors allege Chavez funneled ketamine to Plasencia, securing some of the drug from a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.
The prosecutor said the defendants exchanged messages soon after Perry’s death referencing ketamine as the cause of death. Estrada said they tried to cover up their involvement in supplying Perry ketamine, a powerful anesthetic that is sometimes used to treat chronic pain and depression.
Los Angeles police said in May that they were working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with a probe into why the 54-year-old had so much of the surgical anesthetic in his system.
Iwamasa found the actor face down in his hot tub on Oct. 28, and paramedics who were called immediately declared him dead.
The assistant received the ketamine from Erik Fleming, who has pleaded guilty to obtaining the drug from Sangha and delivering them to Iwamasa. In all, he delivered 50 vials of ketamine for Perry’s use, including 25 handed over four days before the actor’s death.
Perry’s autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.
Ketamine has seen a huge surge in use in recent years as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain. People close to Perry told coroner’s investigators that he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy.
But the medical examiner said Perry’s last treatment 1 1/2 weeks earlier wouldn’t explain the levels of ketamine in his blood. The drug is typically metabolized in a matter of hours. At least two doctors were treating Perry, a psychiatrist and an anesthesiologist who served as his primary care physician, the medical examiner’s report said. No illicit drugs or paraphernalia were found at his house.
Ketamine was listed as the primary cause of death, which was ruled an accident with no foul play suspected, the report said. Drowning and other medical issues were contributing factors, the coroner said.
Perry had years of struggles with addiction dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest television stars of his generation as Chandler Bing alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit sitcom.
Drug-related celebrity deaths have in other cases led authorities to prosecute the people who supplied them.
After rapper Mac Miller died from an overdose of cocaine, alcohol and counterfeit oxycodone that contained fentanyl, two of the men who provided him the fentanyl were convicted of distributing the drug. One was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison, the other to 10 years.
And after Michael Jackson died in 2009 from a lethal dose of propofol, a drug intended for use only during surgery and other medical procedures, not for the insomnia the singer sought it for, his doctor, Conrad Murray, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011. Murray has maintained his innocence.