Matthew Perry's assistant sentenced in ‘Friends' star's ketamine death
The final sentencing in connection with the ketamine overdose death of “Friends” star Matthew Perry took place Wednesday when the actor’s former live-in personal assistant learns his fate in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Kenneth Iwamasa, 60, of the Toluca Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, was sentenced in downtown Los Angeles to three years and five months in federal prison for injecting Perry with multiple doses of ketamine before his death. He also faces 2 years of supervised released and was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine to the U.S. government.
Iwamasa was the central figure in the 2 1/2-year investigation. He was the last of five defendants to face prison time in the October 2023 death of the 54-year-old Perry at his Pacific Palisades residence.
Iwamasa bought the ketamine that caused Perry’s death and injected him with the fatal dose.
He pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, becoming the first defendant to reach a plea deal with prosecutors. He was a key witness for the prosecution in the cases against the other defendants.
Prosecutors asked the judge for a prison term of three years and five months, which would be significant less than the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Iwamasa was ordered to self surrender by noon on July 17 to start his prison sentence.
Wednesday marked Iwamasa’s first court appearance since the case became public.
Defense attorneys argued that Iwamasa was simply following his employer’s wishes in providing and injecting the dissociative anesthetic.
“In short, he could not ‘simply say no,” attorneys said in court filings. “That inability had tragic consequences.”
Perry’s family members, some of whom spoke in court or after the sentencing, made it clear in letters to the judge that there is no one they blame for his death more than Iwamasa — a longtime friend they thought would help the actor maintain sobriety but instead indulged the worst impulses of a lifelong addict.
“Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” wrote Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”
Perry had hired Iwamasa in 2022, and he was paying him $150,000 a year to live at his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant.
The actor had been taking the surgical anesthetic ketamine legally for depression, an increasingly common off-label use. But he wanted more than his doctor would give him.
According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, he bought off-the-books ketamine from another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who taught him how to inject it. Plasencia was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in July.
Iwamasa also began buying ketamine from Perry acquaintance Erik Fleming, who was getting it from a street dealer. Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison two weeks ago.
The dealer, Jasveen Sangha, dubbed “The Ketamine Queen,” was sentenced to 15 years on April 8.
In the final days of Perry’s life, Iwamasa was injecting him six to eight times per day. On Oct. 23, 2023, he shot the 54-year-old actor full of a large dose and left to run errands. He returned to find Perry dead in the Jacuzzi. The LA County Medical Examiner found that ketamine was the primary cause of death. Drowning was a secondary cause.
At first, Iwamasa lied to police, omitting ketamine from the list of medications Perry was using, and saying nothing about his injections. But when investigators served a search warrant in January of 2024, he began coming clean.
Perry became one of the biggest stars of his generation along with Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on “Friends,” NBC’s megahit sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.
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