A Californian doctor who sold ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry has been sentenced to eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release – the second person to be sentenced in the actor’s death.
The BBC reports that Dr Mark Chavez is among five people – including another doctor, sentenced earlier this month – who have pleaded guilty to drug-related charges stemming from the sitcom star’s 2023 death.
The physician admitted to obtaining ketamine from his clinic and a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription and selling it to Dr Salvador Plasencia, who supplied the dissociative anaesthetic to Perry.
Plasencia was sentenced this month to 30 months in prison.
The investigation into Perry’s death examined how the actor acquired ketamine through an underground drug network in Hollywood.
Perry, who had battled drug addiction and depression, had been prescribed the drug as part of his treatment but soon started seeking more than what he was allotted, and leading him, ultimately to the drug ring that ensnared the two doctors, Perry’s live-in assistant, a man named Erik Fleming and Jasveen Sangha, the dealer known as the Ketamine Queen.
The latter three are due to be sentenced in the coming months.
Prosecutors said Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, worked with Chavez and Plasencia to provide the actor with ketamine worth more than $50 000 in the weeks before his death.
In his plea agreement, Chavez admitted that he obtained ketamine from both his former clinic and a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription. He submitted a fraudulent prescription for 30 ketamine lozenges under a former patient’s name – without her knowledge or consent – to sell to Plasencia to give to Perry.
He confessed to selling 22 vials of liquid ketamine and nine ketamine lozenges to Plasencia, according to his October 2024 plea agreement.
Chavez faced up to 10 years in federal prison. As part of his October 2024 plea deal, he surrendered his medical licence and passport.
BBC article – Second doctor sentenced in Matthew Perry overdose death (Open access)
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