Matthew Perry’s live-in assistant is ready to be sentenced on Wednesday for administering the dose of ketamine that killed the “Buddies” actor in 2023.
Kenneth Iwamasa is one among five people charged and convicted in what prosecutors referred to as a conspiracy to illegally distribute ketamine to Perry. The assistant pleaded responsible in August 2024 to 1 rely of conspiracy to distribute ketamine leading to dying and faces as much as 15 years in jail.
Prosecutors stated Iwamasa, the ultimate defendant to be sentenced within the case, injected Perry with ketamine repeatedly within the weeks earlier than the actor’s dying with out correct medical coaching — together with the deadly dose on Oct. 28, 2023.
“When defendant Kenneth Iwamasa was employed as Matthew Perry’s live-in private assistant, he was acutely conscious that Mr. Perry had suffered from drug habit for many of his life. However slightly than assist Mr. Perry preserve sobriety, defendant turned his enabler and drug provider,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum forward of Wednesday’s sentencing listening to. “As defendant injected increasingly more ketamine into Mr. Perry, he noticed — and was the one particular person to see — clear warning indicators that Mr. Perry was at risk.”
Prosecutors stated Iwamasa discovered Perry unconscious inside his house no less than two instances in October 2023, in addition to “freeze up” after a big injection, however, “ignoring these warnings,” continued to inject him with illicit ketamine.
Within the days main as much as Perry’s dying, Iwamasa injected him with “important portions of ketamine,” prosecutors wrote. On the day Perry fatally overdosed, Iwamasa injected him with two doses earlier than Perry requested him to arrange the jacuzzi and to “shoot me up an enormous one,” prosecutors wrote.
Quickly after administering the third dose, Iwamasa left to run errands for Perry and, upon returning, discovered him lifeless, face down within the jacuzzi, in response to prosecutors.
Following Perry’s dying, Iwamasa “continued his wrongdoing by destroying proof and taking different steps to cowl his tracks and hinder justice,” prosecutors wrote. They allege he cleaned up ketamine bottles and syringes from the scene and omitted ketamine from the listing of Perry’s drugs whereas being questioned by officers after calling 911.
Iwamasa finally supplied “important cooperation” within the authorities’s investigation, together with data on different defendants, prosecutors stated whereas asking for 41 months — practically 3 1/2 years — of imprisonment.
On this Sept. 23, 2012, file picture, actor Matthew Perry speaks onstage throughout the sixty fourth Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, in Los Angeles.
Kevin Winter/Getty Photographs, FILE
In response to the federal government’s sentencing memo, protection attorneys argued that Iwamasa didn’t abuse his “trusted place,” saying he was an worker and “acted in any respect related instances on the sufferer’s route slightly than pursuant to his personal discretion.”
“Maybe Defendant’s employment relationship with the sufferer enabled him to extra readily take part within the conspiracy to distribute medication to the sufferer than a person on the road, nevertheless it ought to be famous that quite a few proverbial males on the road did in reality take part in the identical conspiracy,” they wrote. “A number of third events had been concerned who didn’t share the identical relationship with the sufferer. That reality alone ought to overcome the inference that it was Defendant’s explicit relationship with the sufferer that facilitated the crime.”
Prosecutors stated Iwamasa labored with two docs to acquire ketamine for Perry, earlier than turning to 2 sellers to acquire dozens of vials of ketamine, together with the doses that killed the actor.
Iwamasa had recognized Perry since round 1992 earlier than changing into his live-in assistant in 2022 for $150,000 a 12 months, in response to prosecutors. His obligations included these associated to Perry’s medical care, they stated.
In a sufferer impression assertion filed forward of the sentencing, Perry’s mom stated the household was relieved when Perry took on an assistant whom she stated understood the actor’s battles with drug habit, and that all of them trusted Iwamasa.
“Kenny’s most necessary job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his battle towards habit. His primary duty — be sure that Matthew remained what he needed to be: drug free,” she wrote. “Kenny knew, ought to he really feel unduly pressured, that with one cellphone name to any variety of the individuals in Matthew’s orbit, reinforcements can be on the way in which, and his job can be secure.”
“However as a substitute of defending Matthew, he aided and abetted unlawful drug taking, organized for one supply of provide, then one other. Shot the medication into Matthew’s physique although he was not within the least certified,” she continued. “He did it regardless that he may see, anybody may have seen, it was so clearly harmful. And he did it time and again.”
Iwamasa is the fifth and last defendant within the case to be sentenced within the scheme to illegally distribute ketamine to Perry.
Prosecutors stated Jasveen Sangha, reportedly often called the “Ketamine Queen,” labored with Erik Fleming to distribute 51 vials of her ketamine to Iwamasa, together with the doses that killed Perry.
Sangha was sentenced final month to fifteen years in jail. She pleaded responsible final 12 months to 1 rely of sustaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine and one rely of distribution of ketamine leading to dying or critical bodily harm.
Fleming was sentenced final month to 2 years in jail after pleading responsible to 1 rely of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one rely of distribution of ketamine leading to dying.
The 2 docs convicted within the case had been sentenced final 12 months.
Mark Chavez, who as soon as ran a ketamine clinic, admitted to promoting fraudulently obtained ketamine to Salvador Plasencia, who briefly handled Perry, which was then bought to the actor within the weeks earlier than his dying.
Chavez pleaded responsible to 1 rely of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and was sentenced to eight months of house confinement in December 2025.
Plasencia pleaded responsible to 4 counts of distribution of ketamine and was sentenced to 30 months in jail in December 2025.
