One of the doctors who supplied Matthew Perry with ketamine in the Friends actor’s final days in 2023 is set plead guilty to multiple counts of distributing the dissociative anesthetic.
Charged in Perry’s overdose in late October 2023, Dr. Salvador Plasencia has made a plea deal with the Department of Justice. As the charges of four counts of distribution of ketamine stand right now, the Santa Monica physician is facing a maximum sentence of 40 years behind bars. His trial was on the court calendar to start in August in LA. but now with this deal that trial is moot as sentencing looms.
Charging longtime addict Perry premium prices for the ketamine, LA-based Dr. Plasencia and Dr. Mark Chavez of San Diego clearly felt they had lucked into the goldmine with the actor and his ravenous desire for the drug. “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia ruthlessly texted Chavez at one point during their dealings with Perry.
Found in the hot tub at his home, Perry died October 28, 2023 at the age of 54.
On December 15, 2023, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office declared that Perry, who had a very public battle with drugs and booze, passed away from the “acute effects of ketamine.” The autopsy report also cited drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine — a drug used to treat opioid use disorder — as contributing to his death. In In May 2024, an LAPD spokesperson told Deadline an open investigation into Perry’s death was underway with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
We have seen the result of that probe in recent months and today.
“At the earliest opportunity requested by the USAO and provided by the Court, appear and plead guilty to Counts Six, Eight, Nine, and Ten of the first superseding indictment in United States v. Salvador Plasencia, which each charge defendant with distribution of ketamine,” the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Central District of California said in the June 13 plea agreement made public Monday. The agreement will finds the feds promising to “recommend a two-level reduction in the applicable Sentencing Guidelines offense level” to the judge. That could help bring Plasencia’s sentence down to just a few years, maybe.
The plea deal is signed by Assistant US Attorney Ian Yanniello, the defendant himself and Plasencia’s lawyer Debra S. White. In an accompanying statement the DOJ made sure to make clear, Dr. Plasencia has “NOT YET PLEADED GUILTY (caps theirs).” The feds added: “We expect he will plead guilty in the coming weeks. We will have no further comment.”
Prosecutors do make a comment in the plea deal that Plasencia did not provide Perry with the drugs that left him dead in at his Pacific Palisades almost two years ago.
Doctor Chavez,and Perry’s personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa previously entered guilty pleas and are set for sentencing in September and November respectively. Former treatment center director Erik Fleming, who was involved in the fatal dose of Ketamine, entered a guilty plea last August to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. Spotlighted as the individual who got Perry the ketamine that killed him, Jasveen Sangha a.k.a the “Ketamine Queen,” is fighting the charges of conspiracy, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and more. Her trial is set to start later this summer.
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