Matthew Perry’s live-in assistant gets more than 3 years in prison for role in actor’s drug death

By FRED SHUSTER | City News Service

The former live-in personal assistant to Matthew Perry was sentenced Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles to three years, five months behind bars for injecting the “Friends” actor with the multiple doses of ketamine that killed him in October 2023.

Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, of Toluca Lake — the last of five defendants indicted in the case to be sentenced — was also ordered to serve two years in supervised release and pay a $10,000 fine.

The judge excoriated Iwamasa before imposing sentence.

“You were privy to Mr. Perry’s addiction (yet) continued to obtain the drug and inject him,” U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said from the bench. “Your conduct was reckless.”

After administering the fatal dose to Perry, Iwamasa “left him alone for quite some time,” and upon returning and finding the actor dead, took steps to get rid of evidence, the judge said.

Iwamasa pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death and agreed to cooperate in the investigation. He was the first of the defendants to plead guilty in the case.

Lisa Ferguson, Perry’s former longtime business manager and current executor of his estate, told the court that Iwamasa had worked as the actor’s personal assistant for one year and had attempted to make himself “indispensable” by illegally procuring and administering the drugs Perry desired.

“You didn’t care,” Ferguson said. “You were now indispensable. You were Matthew’s drug supplier … you are the monster that killed him. … You preyed on a vulnerable, kind, sensitive man.”

But defense attorney Alan Eisner told the court Iwamasa was ultimately a hired hand doing what his boss told him to do as part of a standard employer-employee relationship.

“At every step, Mr. Iwamasa’s conduct was directed by Mr. Perry,” Eisner said, arguing Wednesday for a year’s split sentence of prison and home detention for his client.

Perry “was not blameless” in the events that resulted in his death, the attorney said, adding that “nobody likes to hear” that view.

Iwamasa had “a particular vulnerability to the relationship dynamic which he fell into with the victim. In short, he could not ‘simply say no.’ That inability had tragic consequences,” the attorney wrote in a court filing.

Perry, who had long struggled with addiction and wrote about it in a memoir, illegally obtained the powerful dissociative anesthetic from at least two sources. The drug is used medically for anesthesia, depression and pain management and has some hallucinogenic effects.

Iwamasa admitted to working with a Santa Monica doctor, Salvador Plasencia, and an associate, Erik Fleming, to illegally obtain ketamine for Perry. Plasencia contacted fellow doctor Mark Chavez — then a licensed San Diego physician who operated a ketamine clinic — to obtain the drug.

Fleming, for his part, acknowledged acting as a middleman in drug deals between Jasveen Sangha, the admitted North Hollywood dealer dubbed the “Ketamine Queen,” and Iwamasa, who injected Perry with the fatal doses.

Prosecutors said Plasencia taught Iwamasa how to inject Perry with the drug. Plasencia knew that Iwamasa had never received medical training and knew little, if anything, about administering or treating patients with controlled substances, court papers state.

In the days leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa injected the actor with more than 25 shots of ketamine, including at least three jabs on the day he died, federal prosecutors said.

On the last day, Perry told Iwamasa, “Shoot me up with a big one,” according to papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.

Broadcast journalist Keith Morrison, who was Perry’s stepfather, told the court that Iwamasa considered himself “part of the family” and was trying to make himself so important to Perry that “he could never be gotten rid of.”

Morrison said Iwamasa’s motivation for providing drugs to Perry was to keep living “a pretty dandy lifestyle. You were in control of one of the most famous people on the planet.”

Perry detailed his years-long struggle with addiction in the 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” The “Friends” star, who played the character Chandler Bing in the series from 1994 to 2004, said he went through detox dozens of times.

The actor was found dead Oct. 28, 2023, face down in a jacuzzi behind his Pacific Palisades home. He was 54. The Los Angeles County medical examiner determined the cause of death as “the acute effects of ketamine.” Contributing factors include drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid use disorder, the medical examiner said.

The five defendants were charged in connection with Perry’s death in an 18-count indictment handed down in August 2024.

Fleming, 56, of Hawthorne, was sentenced to two years behind bars earlier this month for his guilty plea to conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

Sangha, 42, was sentenced last month to 15 years behind bars for supplying the fatal dose that caused Perry’s death. She pleaded guilty to maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury.

Plasencia, 44, also known as “Dr. P,” pleaded guilty in July 2025 to four counts of distribution of ketamine. He was sentenced in December to two years, six months behind bars for illegally supplying the drug.

Chavez, 55, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. The second of two former doctors convicted in Perry’s death, Chavez was handed a sentence of eight months of home confinement and ordered to perform 300 hours of community service.