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 was sentenced in Los Angeles to prison as part of a plea agreement.
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.
The judge had strong words before the sentencing.
“You were privy to Mr. Perry’s addiction (yet) continued to obtain the drug and inject him,” U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said. “Your conduct was reckless.”
Lisa Ferguson, Perry’s former longtime business manager and current executor of his estate, told the court that Iwamasa was the actor’s personal assistant for one year and had attempted to make himself “indispensable.”
“You didn’t care,” Ferguson said. “You were now indispensable. You were Matthew’s drug supplier… You are the monster that killed him… You preyed on a vulnerable, kind, sensitive man.”
NBC Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison, Perry’s step-father, spoke after the court proceeding.
“He should have, he promised to, he could have called us when there was any problem,” Morrison said. “The job would’ve been safe. The money would’ve been safe. Instead, he controlled him by the use of ketamine.
“His mother is truly broken. That makes me very, very sad.”
Iwamasa 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 was significantly less than the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Iwamasa was ordered to surrender by noon on July 17 to start his prison sentence.
Wednesday marked Iwamasa’s first court appearance since the case became public.
After arguing that Iwamasa was simply following his employer’s wishes in providing and injecting the dissociative anesthetic, defense attorneys reiterated Wednesday that Iwamasa was “regretfully incapable at the time to say no to Mr. Perry” due to the “power dynamic.”
“He should have pushed back. He should have said no,” Alan Eisner, Iwamasa’s attorney, said outside the courtroom after the sentencing. “Kenny will regret the lack of action for the rest of his life.”
Eisner requested his client serve six months.
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.”
Erik Fleming spoke publicly for the first time about his role in Matthew Perry’s death. Keenan Willard reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
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.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nbclosangeles.com ’
