Matthew Perry's Doctor Sentenced to 30 Months Over Ketamine Sales

Dr. Salvador Plasencia met Matthew Perry on September 30, 2023. Before he ever set foot inside the actor's house, he texted another doctor a single line that would later be read aloud in a federal courtroom: "I wonder how much this moron will pay." Then he added, "let's find out."

That text is now the thing people remember most about this case. It is also the closest thing we have to a confession of intent. Plasencia, a 44-year-old former urgent-care doctor from the Los Angeles area, has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. He stood in court and admitted he sold ketamine to a man he knew was struggling, then tried to cover his tracks. Here is what actually came out.

The text he can't take back

The introduction came from one of Plasencia's own patients. That person described Perry as a "high profile person" willing to pay "cash and lots of thousands" for ketamine. Most doctors hear that and walk the other way. Plasencia heard a payday.

His messages to his co-conspirator, fellow doctor Mark Chavez, weren't ambiguous. He didn't write that he was worried about a patient or unsure about treatment. He wrote that he wanted to know how much money he could squeeze out of a famous addict. Prosecutors leaned on that "moron" text because it showed the whole thing was about cash, not care. After the first sale, Plasencia even asked Chavez if they could keep the supply going so the two of them could become Perry's "go-to" source.

What he actually charged

Here's the part that should make anyone roll their eyes. On the day he met Perry, Plasencia drove to Costa Mesa and bought $795 worth of ketamine vials, tablets, syringes, and gloves from Chavez. Basic supplies. The going rate for a vial of ketamine was about $15.

He then drove to Perry's home, injected him, and handed a vial to Perry's assistant. The assistant paid him $4,500 for that one visit. Over a 13-day stretch from September 30 to October 12, 2023, Plasencia distributed 20 vials, plus tablets and syringes, and charged a total of $57,000. One single house call brought in $12,000. Do the math on $15 vials and you see the markup wasn't a markup. It was a shakedown wearing a white coat.

The warning signs he drove past

Plasencia didn't just sell the drug and leave. During one session, Perry's blood pressure spiked and he froze up. A doctor who saw that should have stopped cold. Plasencia left additional vials behind anyway. He also met Perry once in a Long Beach parking lot and injected him in the backseat of his car, which is not a sentence that should ever describe a licensed physician at work.

Then he taught Perry's live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject the drug. Iwamasa had zero medical training. From that point on, Plasencia mostly dealt through the assistant. The day before Perry died, he texted Iwamasa that he'd be out of town but had "supplies" available if needed.

The cover-up made it worse

After Perry's death, the DEA started asking questions. Instead of coming clean, Plasencia falsified his treatment notes and an invoice. One fake entry claimed Perry was "not present" on October 7, 2023. In reality, Plasencia had met Iwamasa at midnight on a street corner outside a Santa Monica bar to hand over ketamine vials. He wrote a lie into a medical record to hide a midnight drug handoff.

Plasencia pleaded guilty in July 2025 to four counts of distributing ketamine. Five other counts, including the falsified-records charges, were dropped as part of the deal. He surrendered his California medical license in September 2025.

What the judge said

Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett could have given him up to 40 years. Prosecutors asked for three. The defense asked for one day plus probation, painting Plasencia as a man who climbed out of poverty to become a doctor his patients loved. Some of those patients sent testimonials. His lawyers called the whole thing "the biggest mistake of his life."

The judge landed on 30 months, plus a $5,600 fine and two years of probation, and ordered him into custody on the spot. She was careful to note that Plasencia did not provide the dose that killed Perry. But she didn't let him off the hook either. "You and others helped Mr. Perry on the road to such an ending by continuing to feed his ketamine addiction," she told him. He was the first of five defendants to be sentenced.

The other four people involved

This was never a one-man situation. Five people were charged, and all five pleaded guilty. Mark Chavez, the doctor who supplied Plasencia, got eight months of home confinement, three years of supervised release, and 300 hours of community service. Chavez got the ketamine by submitting a fake prescription in a patient's name without that person's knowledge. He'd been an ER doctor for 20 years. He now drives for Uber to make a living.

Then there's the supply chain that delivered the fatal dose. Drug dealer Jasveen Sangha, described by prosecutors as a major dealer serving "high-end celebrities," was sentenced to 15 years. The DEA raided her North Hollywood home in March 2024 and called it a "drug-selling emporium." Erik Fleming, who admitted getting 71 vials of ketamine from Sangha to sell to Perry, got two years.

The assistant the family blames most

Kenneth Iwamasa got the longest sentence of anyone besides the dealer. Perry hired him in 2022, paying $150,000 a year to live in the house and act as his assistant. According to his plea, Iwamasa bought off-the-books ketamine, learned to inject it from Plasencia, and gave Perry the doses in his final weeks, including the fatal one on October 28, 2023.

The details from prosecutors are grim. Iwamasa found Perry unconscious at least twice that October and watched him "freeze up" after a big injection. He kept going anyway. On the final day, he gave Perry two doses, then a third after Perry asked him to "shoot me up a big one." He left to run errands and came back to find Perry face down in the jacuzzi. He then cleaned up the bottles and syringes and left ketamine off the list of medications when police questioned him.

Iwamasa was sentenced to 41 months, more than three years, plus a $10,000 fine. His lawyer argued he was just a loyal employee who couldn't say no to a powerful boss. The judge cut him off: "Unwilling. Not unable. He could have said no."

What Perry's family said

Perry's mother, Suzanne Perry, and his stepfather, the journalist Keith Morrison, sat in court for Plasencia's sentencing. They delivered a victim impact statement and said they believe Plasencia "is among the most culpable of all."

The family saved its sharpest words for Iwamasa. His mother wrote that Iwamasa's "most important job, by far, was to be my son's companion and guardian in his fight against addiction." Perry's sister Caitlin Morrison wrote that she has "no sympathy" for him, saying that when he walked out of that house, he was either running from what he'd done or abandoning a vulnerable person in a dangerous spot. Prosecutors put it bluntly in the assistant's case: the man hired to keep Perry sober became "his enabler and drug supplier."

Where the case stands now

Perry died at 54 in October 2023, found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home. He'd been open for years about his battles, once estimating he'd spent $9 million trying to get sober across 15 rehab stays. He had been taking ketamine legally for depression. When his regular doctor wouldn't hand over the amount he wanted, he went looking elsewhere, and people like Plasencia were happy to take the cash.

The full timeline of guilty pleas and sentences stretched across more than two and a half years. With all five defendants now sentenced, the case is closed. Plasencia is the one whose words stuck, though. A doctor looked at a famous man in crisis and saw a wallet. He typed it out, sent it, and a court read it back to him before sending him to prison.