Five People, Including a Personal Assistant and Two Doctors, Arrested in Connection With Matthew Perry's Overdose Death

Call it a palate cleanser.

I don't know if there's any grist here for the political mill.

A prosecutor says five people have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry's death from a ketamine overdose last year, including the actor's assistant and two doctors.

U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges Thursday, saying the doctors supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine and even wondered in a text message how much the former "Friends" star would be willing to pay.

"These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong," Estrada said.

Perry died in October due to a ketamine overdose and received several injections of the drug on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant. The assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, is the one who found Perry dead later that day.

The actor went to the two charged doctors in desperation after his regular doctors refused to give him ketamine in the amounts he wanted. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in one instance the actor paid $2,000 for a vial of ketamine that cost one of the physicians about $12.

Two of the people, including one of the doctors charged, were arrested Thursday, Estrada said. Two of the defendants, including Iwamasa, have pleaded guilty to charges already, and a third person has agreed to plead guilty.

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The other person arrested Thursday is Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors described as a drug dealer known as the "ketamine queen." Ketamine supplied by Sangha caused Perry's death, authorities said.

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A San Diego physician, Dr. Mark Chavez, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Prosecutors allege Chavez funneled ketamine to Plasencia, securing some of the drug from a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.

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Perry's autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.

He was undergoing "ketamine infusion therapy." I'm not sure for what. Ketamine is sometimes used for depression or chronic pain. I don't know if any of this was legit or Perry just googling "ways to get ketamine legally."

In any event, the ketamine infusion was not a big enough dose, or a recent enough does, to explain the massive, lethal dose he had in his bod.

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Ketamine was listed as the primary cause of death, which was ruled an accident with no foul play suspected, the report said. Drowning and other medical issues were contributing factors, the coroner said.

"Drowning... was a contributing factor in his death" is an odd sentence.

Two things I never understand:

Celebrity millionaires who become drug addicts. As I think Dennis Miller once said, these people are rich enough to be able to pay people to act out their hallucinations for them. Why bother with drugs?

Doctors who turn drug dealer. Doctors are pretty rich. Yes, I guess it's nice to take $2000 bucks, tax-free, for each $12 dose of ketamine you sell to an addict.

But... risk-reward, man. That addict will eventually kill himself, and then you'll be prosecuted. And lose your medical license.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:40 PM

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