Matthew Perry: Five people charged in connection with the actor's death

CNN
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According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, five people have been charged in connection with the death of actor Matthew Perry in 2023.

The charges were announced at a press conference in Los Angeles on Thursday morning and came after investigators said they uncovered an underground network of drug dealers and suppliers responsible for distributing the potentially lethal drug ketamine that killed Perry.

The defendants include two doctors, Perry's personal assistant who lives with him, and a person authorities call the “ketamine queen,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

US Attorney Martin Estrada said the defendants had “exploited Mr. Perry's addiction problems.”

“They knew what they were doing was wrong,” Estrada said.

Three of the five defendants have reached a plea agreement.

The other two defendants are Dr. Salvador Plasencia of Santa Monica, California, and Jasveen Sangha, who Estrada said ran a “drug trafficking operation” out of her home. They were charged on Wednesday, the U.S. attorney said.

CNN has contacted lawyers for Plasencia and Sangha.

The popular actor, who played the role of Chandler Bing on Friends, died in October 2023 at the age of 54. Perry was found floating facedown in a freestanding hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home. The actor died from the “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning, according to the autopsy report from the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's Office.

“Matthew Perry's journey began with unscrupulous doctors who abused their positions of trust because they saw him as a payday, to street dealers who gave him ketamine in unmarked vials,” DEA Director Anne Milgram said in the press release. “Every day, the DEA works tirelessly with our federal, state and local partners to protect the public and hold accountable those who distribute deadly and dangerous drugs – whether they are local drug dealers or doctors who break their oath to care for patients.”

CNN has asked representatives from Perry's foundation and his “Friends” colleagues for comment on the charges announced Thursday.

In announcing the charges on Thursday, Estrada said investigators believe Perry will “relapse into addiction” in the fall of 2023, citing Perry's vulnerability as a recovering addict.

Estrada alleged that Plasencia worked with Dr. Mark Chavez to supply Perry with ketamine, which Perry's assistant Kenneth Iwamasa injected into the actor despite having no medical training.

Chavez, a 54-year-old doctor from San Diego, “has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine,” the press release said.

Iwamasa, a 59-year-old from Toluca Lake, California, pleaded guilty on Aug. 7 to conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, the press release said. Authorities allege Iwamasa also “administered multiple injections to Perry on October 28, 2023 – the day Perry died.”

Eric Fleming, 54, of Hawthorne, California, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death, according to the U.S. Attorney. Fleming said in court documents that he distributed the ketamine that killed Perry, which Fleming said he received from Sangha, the news release added.

Estrada said Perry was given “approximately 20 vials of ketamine” over the course of two months, from September to October 2023, costing him approximately $55,000.

“Defendant Plasencia saw this as an opportunity to profit from Mr. Perry,” Estrada said. “He texted in September 2023, 'I wonder how much this idiot will pay.' He also stated in the text messages that he wanted to be Mr. Perry's sole source of supply.”

Perry had described in detail his decades-long struggle with drug addiction in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. He wrote that he began abusing prescription drugs after he was involved in a jet ski accident on the set of the 1997 film Fools Rush In and was prescribed Vicodin.