A doctor accused of supplying the ketamine that led to the death of Matthew Perry allegedly realized the actor’s life was in danger when he suffered a seizure during an overdose just 16 days before his death.
Dr. Salvador Plascencia, 42, had a license to prescribe and administer the powerful tranquilizer but needed help from another medic to keep up with the large amounts the Friends star was consuming in the weeks leading up to his death in October last year.
Plascencia allegedly showed contempt for Perry as his dependency spiraled, asking a crooked colleague, “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” according to prosecutors.
However, he realized the actor’s life was hanging by a thread when he suffered a seizure during an overdose a mere 16 days before he died. “Let’s not do that again,” he nervously told Perry’s assistant.
Matthew Perry was pictured out in LA with personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa exactly two months before his death. Iwasama is charged with injecting the Friends star with dozens of doses of ketamine, including the one that killed him
Doctor Salvador Plascencia, 42, allegedly referred to the Friends star as a ‘moron’ while earning thousands of dollars for the ketamine he supplied him with in the days before his death
The shocking details emerged on Thursday as Plascencia and four other alleged co-conspirators were arrested following a grand jury indictment.
Perry was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his LA home on October 28 by his live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa. His cause of death was later determined to be “the acute effects of ketamine.”
Iwamasa has since admitted to being the one who administered the fatal doses to the actor, after being trained how to deliver them by Plascencia.
On October 4, Iwamasa reported that he had successfully injected Perry, noting that he “found the sweet spot but trying different places led to running out” of ketamine.
The affidavit claims that Perry spent $55,000 on ketamine supplied by Plascencia in the two months before he died, and that Iwamasa injected Perry with 27 shots of ketamine in just five days.
San Diego doctor Mark Chavez, 54, has admitted to diverting supplies from his clinic by filling out fake prescriptions as Plascencia scrambled to fulfill Perry’s orders.
In one instance, Plascencia worked with Chavez to charge Perry $2,000 for a vial of ketamine that cost $12, after he became increasingly desperate to get his hands on the drug, according to the filings.
Iwamasa would relay Perry’s requests in coded language, referring to bottles of ketamine as “Dr Pepper,” “cans,” and “bots” via encrypted messaging apps.
At one point, he asked if he could pay with “something besides cash” because “it’s hard to get to the bank on the fly with all that’s going on which happens so fast now.”
But the doctors struggled to keep up with demand, and Iwamasa turned to a friend of the actor, Eric Fleming, 54, to source extra supplies.
He in turn went to Hollywood’s alleged “Ketamine Queen,” Jasveen Sangha, 41, telling Iwamasa “She only deals with high-end and celebs. If it were not great stuff, she’d lose her business.”
Sangha sold dozens of vials of the drug to Iwamasa via Fleming and was so pleased with the size of his orders that she threw in some lollipops made of ketamine as an “add-on.”
But she was well aware of the drug’s risks, prosecutors claim, after allegedly selling it to client Cody McLaury, just hours before his overdose death in 2019.
“The ketamine you sold my brother killed him,” a furious relative told her in a text message. “It’s listed as the cause of death.”
Jasveen Sangha, 41, is better known as the ‘Ketamine Queen’ of north Hollywood. Prosecutors say she is the lynchpin for a ‘broad underground criminal network’ which supplied the Friends star the fatal dose which killed him in October 2023
The Friends star and Iwamasa had been living in a $49,000-a-month Beverly Hills property for a little over a year while his Pacific Palisades pad underwent renovations
Iwamasa had originally relied on Plascencia to inject Perry in meetings which would usually take place at Perry’s home.
But on October 10, the three men met at a car lot in Long Beach where Plascencia injected Perry inside a parked car.
Two days later, Plascencia issued his warning after Perry’s near-fatal overdose – but then handed Iwamasa more bottles before leaving.
As the assistant’s expertise developed, Iwamasa was injecting Perry up to six times a day before finding him dead in his hot tub on October 28.
And as news of the beloved actor’s death filtered out that evening, Sang