A California doctor who admitted to supplying ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles. Dr. Salvador Plasencia, one of five individuals convicted in connection with Perry’s 2023 death, pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of distributing the drug.
Perry, 54, was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home and could not be revived. An autopsy determined he died from acute ketamine effects. While Perry initially used ketamine under medical supervision to address depression and anxiety, investigators found that in the weeks before his death he had begun injecting it six to eight times per day.
Plasencia operated an urgent care clinic in Malibu and admitted in his plea agreement that he worked with another physician, Dr. Mark Chavez, to supply ketamine to Perry through his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. According to prosecutors, Plasencia sold Perry’s team multiple vials of ketamine, lozenges, and syringes, and visited the actor’s home to administer injections. He also left additional doses with Iwamasa despite knowing the assistant was not trained to handle the drug.
Federal prosecutors said Plasencia acted out of financial motivation and sought to make himself Perry’s exclusive supplier. They cited a message he sent the day he met the actor, asking a co-conspirator, “I wonder how much this moron will pay” before adding, “let’s find out.”
Plasencia is the first among the five defendants to face sentencing and could receive up to ten years in federal prison for each count.
Ahead of the hearing, Perry’s parents, Suzanne Morrison and Keith Morrison, submitted victim impact statements describing the overwhelming grief caused by their son’s death. They referred to Plasencia as “among the most culpable of all” involved in the case and condemned what they called the “greedy jackals” who enabled Perry’s escalating drug use.
“How do you measure grief? Can you possibly provide any rational accounting? The bottom falling out? Yes, that,” they wrote. They described years spent trying to protect their son from addiction and expressed devastation over efforts they said were undone by those who sought profit over Perry’s well-being.
