{"id":698094,"date":"2026-05-27T15:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/698094\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T15:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:15:09","slug":"assistant-who-injected-matthew-perry-with-ketamine-to-be-sentenced-matthew-perry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/698094\/","title":{"rendered":"Assistant who injected Matthew Perry with ketamine to be sentenced | Matthew Perry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The personal assistant who injected<\/a> Matthew Perry with ketamine several times with no medical training, including on the day the Friends actor was found dead<\/a> in a hot tub at his Los Angeles residence, will be sentenced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, pleaded guilty to distributing ketamine that resulted in death or serious bodily injury. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of three years and five months.<\/p>\n

Iwamasa\u2019s sentencing will cap the criminal<\/a> investigation into the five individuals authorities say played a role in Perry\u2019s overdose death in 2023.<\/p>\n

The lengthiest sentences were handed down to Jasveen Sangha<\/a>, a drug dealer dubbed the \u201cKetamine queen\u201d for her prolific criminal enterprise, who supplied the fatal dose, and Perry\u2019s acquaintance, Erik Fleming, the drug addiction counselor who served as a middleman in the sale. Sangha is set to serve 15 years in prison while Fleming is expected to spend two years<\/a> behind bars.<\/p>\n

Salvador Plasencia,<\/a> a former doctor, who continued to supply Iwamasa with ketamine after Perry had an adverse reaction \u2013 over two weeks before his death \u2013 which left him mute and immobile, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Another doctor, Mark Chavez, who sold ketamine to Perry, will not face prison<\/a> time. Chavez was sentenced in December to eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.<\/p>\n

Iwamasa\u2019s case has drawn sympathy from some Hollywood insiders<\/a>, who characterized the relationship between a celebrity and their assistant as a stark power imbalance.<\/p>\n

He \u201ccould not \u2018simply say no\u2019,\u201d Iwamasa\u2019s attorneys reportedly wrote in a recent<\/a> court filing.<\/p>\n

Between 2022 and 2023, Iwamasa was employed as Perry\u2019s live-in personal assistant. The two had been acquainted for over two decades.<\/p>\n

Perry, who had publicly shared his struggles with opioid addiction, enlisted Iwamasa\u2019s help in the fall of 2023 to procure ketamine \u2013 an anesthetic only legal when prescribed, and that can bring on mind-altering effects, including a sedated state.<\/p>\n

Perry had sought ketamine infusion therapy at a California<\/a> clinic to treat anxiety and depression, but turned to outside sources to increase his dosage of the drug, according to federal authorities.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say Iwamasa paid Plasencia at least $55,000 to purchase ketamine on several occasions between September and October 2023. He also was connected to the drug via Fleming.<\/p>\n

In the three days leading up to Perry\u2019s death, Iwamasa injected the actor with six to eight shots of ketamine per day, according to court documents. Authorities say Iwamasa had found Perry unresponsive that month at least twice.<\/p>\n

In letters to the judge, Perry\u2019s family condemned Iwamasa\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

The actor\u2019s mother, Suzanne Morrison, said the family trusted Iwamasa to help Perry remain sober. She said: \u201cKenny knew, should he feel unduly pressured, that with one phone call to any number of the people in Matthew\u2019s orbit, reinforcements would be on the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s sister, Madeline Morrison, recounted the days after her brother\u2019s death, when she observed Iwamasa behave in an \u201cunsettled\u201d manner. \u201cHe repeatedly volunteered his version of events without being asked, as if he were being interviewed rather than mourning a friend,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, I told myself he was simply in shock, grieving as we all were. In reality, he was trying to distract us from the truth: that he had injected my brother with a lethal dose of ketamine and left him in a hot tub to die.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The personal assistant who injected Matthew Perry with ketamine several times with no medical training, including on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-698094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}