A California doctor who supplied ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry has been sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first person to receive prison time in the actor’s overdose death.
Dr Salvador Plasencia was one of five charged in a multiyear federal investigation that examined how Perry acquired the dissociative anaesthetic through an underground drug network in Hollywood.
Perry, 54, was found dead at his Los Angeles home in 2023 after years of struggling with depression and addiction.
Perry’s family asked the judge for a lengthy sentence, calling Plasencia “most culpable”, and detailed their struggle to understand why he repeatedly supplied Perry with drugs.
“Mr. Plasencia accepts the Court’s sentence today with humility and deep remorse,” his legal team said in a statement to the BBC.
“He was a good doctor loved by those he treated. He is not a villain,” the statement reads. “He is someone who made serious mistakes in his treatment decisions involving the off-label use of ketamine.”
Plasencia pleaded guilty over the summer to four counts of distributing ketamine. The charges carried a maximum of 40 years in prison, though prosecutors had asked for a sentence of three years.
The four others charged in the case – including another doctor, his assistant and the two people who supplied the ketamine dose that killed him – have also pleaded guilty and are set to be sentenced in the coming months.
Best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends, the sitcom star was vocal and public over the years with his struggles with depression and drug addiction.
“Matthew’s recovery counted on you saying NO,” his father, John, and step-mother, Debbie, wrote in an emotional letter ahead of Plasencia’s sentencing. “Your motives? I can’t imagine. A doctor whose life is devoted to helping people?”
The actor’s father and stepmother said the loss had “devastated” their family as their “next patriarch” is now gone, blaming Plasencia – a doctor who Perry’s mother and stepfather called a “jackal” who repeatedly broke his Hippocratic oath.
Perry’s parents filed the letters, known as victim impact statements, to the judge to consider ahead of making his sentencing decision.
His mother and step-father, Suzanne and Keith Morrison, in their victim statement highlighted text messages included in court records, where Plasencia called Perry a “moron” and wondered how much he would be willing to pay for the drugs.
“Sometimes it’s a little easier to understand when a person commits a terrible crime. Maybe in the heat of passion, or because that person makes one very bad decision,” they wrote. “But…a doctor? Who trades on respect, and trust?”
They said Matthew had spent time trying to recover and was hoping for another acting comeback.
“He wanted, needed, deserved..a third act. It was ..in the planning. And then, those jackals.”
In a letter to the judge last month, Plasencia apologised and said he had fully taken responsibility for his actions and role in Perry’s death.
“I did not set out to harm anyone, but my decisions during those days betrayed my duty as a physician,” Plasencia wrote. “I crossed lines that no doctor should ever cross. No one forced me to do this; it was my own poor judgment and it was wrong.”
He explained that his medical clinic had been struggling and despite seeing Perry’s “signs of addiction”, the offer of “large sums of money was appealing”.
Plasencia also said that he voluntarily surrendered his medical license when he was arrested and gave up his clinic and the profession that once defined him. He said that he would “accept whatever sentence this Court deems appropriate”.
Ketamine has some hallucinogenic effects and is meant to be administered only by a physician.
The actor was taking legal, prescribed amounts of the drug to treat his depression, but then started wanting more than what was provided.
Court documents as part of the federal investigation show it led him to multiple doctors and a woman prosecutors called the “Ketamine Queen” who supplied vast amounts of the drug and others from her Los Angeles home, which they called a “drug-selling emporium”.
Prosecutors say Plasencia – also known as “Dr P” – injected Perry with ketamine at his home and in the parking lot of an aquarium in Long Beach, about 25 miles south of Los Angeles.
Plasencia taught Perry’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa – who also pleaded guilty in the case – how to administer the drug and sold additional vials for them to keep at home, according to court documents filed for the plea agreement.
Prosecutors say between 30 September 2023 and 12 October 2023, Plasencia sold twenty 5ml (100mg/ml) vials of ketamine, ketamine lozenges, and syringes to Perry and his assistant.
Prosecutors have said Plasencia and others charged in the case “took advantage of Mr Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves”.
