Personal assistant who injected actor Matthew Perry with drugs sentenced to 41 months

LOS ANGELES – The personal assistant who repeatedly injected Matthew Perry with ketamine before he died was sentenced to prison on May 27, becoming the fifth person to face justice over the Friends (1994 to 2004) star’s fatal overdose.

Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, was ordered to serve three years and five months in federal lock-up after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.

Prosecutors said that in the days leading up to Perry’s 2023 death in a hot tub, Iwamasa had given the 54-year-old more than 25 shots of the drug, including at least three jabs on the day he died.

On the actor’s last day, he told Iwamasa, who lived at his luxury Los Angeles home: “Shoot me up with a big one,” court papers said.

Perry’s mother Suzanne Morrison said the family had trusted Iwamasa.

“Kenny’s most important job – by far – was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” she wrote in a letter to US District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett.

“We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”

Lawyers for Iwamasa said he was really little more than a hired hand, bound to do the bidding of his wealthy boss.

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 defence wrote in a court filing.

Others sentenced in connection with Perry’s death include Salvador Plasencia, one of two doctors who profited off Perry’s addiction.

The physician taught Iwamasa how to inject ketamine despite knowing he had no medical training and knew nothing about treating patients with controlled substances.

Plasencia, who received 2½ years jail, worked with another doctor to source drugs for Perry, charging vastly inflated prices and musing at one point: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

His co-conspirator Mark Chavez was sentenced to house arrest.

Earlier in May, Erik Fleming, a certified drug counsellor who acted as a middleman to help supply Perry with controlled substances, was sentenced to two years in prison.

In April, Jasveen Sangha – a British-American woman dubbed “The Ketamine Queen” who styled herself as a dealer to the stars – was given a 15-year sentence.

Chandler

Perry had openly struggled for decades with addiction, but had appeared to colleagues to be beating his demons when he died.

He had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression.

But prosecutors said that by late 2023, Perry had become addicted to the substance, which is used as an anaesthetic but also has psychedelic properties and is a popular party drug.

His death set off waves of grief among generations of Friends fans who loved him as the sarcastic man-child Chandler Bing.

The sitcom, which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating and careers, drew a massive following and made megastars of previously unknown actors.

Perry’s role brought him fabulous wealth, but hid a dark struggle with addiction to painkillers and alcohol.

In 2018, he suffered a drug-related burst colon and underwent multiple surgeries.

In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry described going through detox dozens of times. “I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote, “save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps.” AFP