Doctor Pleads Guilty to Selling Matthew Perry Deadly Ketamine in Scheme to Make $55K Off Addicted 'Friends' Star Before Overdose
Mark Chavez, one of the doctors charged with fueling Matthew Perry's deadly ketamine addiction, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute ketamine.
Oct. 2 2024, Published 4:17 p.m. ET
One of the two doctors charged in connection with the death of Friends star Matthew Perry has sensationally pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute the deadly tranquilizer ketamine.
Mark Chavez, 45, appeared in a Los Angeles court on Wednesday to enter his plea – and could now face up to a decade behind bars, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Chavez could now face up to a decade behind bars.
It comes after Chandler Bing star Perry was found slumped lifeless in the hot tub in the back garden of his $6.5million mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles aged 54, on October 28 last year.
The tortured actor, whose years-long addictions to booze and drugs were so severe they once left him with a hole in his guts, was having ketamine injected into him six to eight times a day before his death.
Prosecutors said Chavez schemed with Perry's ketamine doctor, Salvador Plasencia, to take advantage of the actor's well-known addiction struggles for their own personal gain.
Perry went to Plasencia for legal – though controversial – ketamine therapy last year to treat his severe depression and anxiety leftover from decades of heavy opioid abuse. But when he became hooked, prosecutors said Plasencia began selling the drug to him illicitly.
Officials say Chavez supplied Perry's doctor, Salvador Plasencia, with ketamine he illegally sold the actor.
Plasencia allegedly got the illegal supply from Chavez and sold it to the actor at exorbitant prices.
Officials said: "(Chavez) admitted in his plea agreement to selling ketamine to (Plasencia), including ketamine that he had diverted from his former ketamine clinic."
As Perry's addiction spiraled, Plasencia allegedly wrote in a text message to Chavez: "I wonder how much this moron will pay."
In the two months leading up to his overdose death, the actor paid $55,000 for 20 vials of ketamine from the pair, who charged him $2,000 for a vial that cost $12, according to prosecutors.
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'Ketamine queen' Jasveen Sangha pleaded not guilty.
Officials added: "(Chavez) also obtained additional ketamine to transfer to (Plasencia) by making false representations to a wholesale ketamine distributor and by submitting a fraudulent prescription in the name of a former patient without that patient's knowledge or consent."
Chavez was in court late last month for an initial bond hearing and arraignment on one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. The judge allowed him to be released on a $50k unsecured bond, but he had to agree he would stop practicing medicine and surrender his passport.
Perry died at his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023.
The agreement made Chavez the third out of five defendants charged in the indictment to enter a guilty plea in the high-profile case.
Perry's live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwasama, admitted to injecting the actor with the fatal dose of ketamine he bought from "ketamine queen" Jasveen Sangha and her middle-man, Erik Fleming, according to the indictment.
Iwamasa and Fleming previously entered their guilty pleas. Plasencia and Sangha, the two "lead defendants" have each pleaded not guilty to more serious charges of conspiring to distribute ketamine resulting in death.
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