Matthew Perry’s personal assistant has pleaded guilty to giving the late Friends star the ketamine that caused his death, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Iwamasa now faces up to 15 years in prison, after a raid that also led to charges against four other defendants, including a Los Angeles doctor who supplied Perry with the deadly drug.
Last November, DailyMail.com revealed that Iwamasa had been living with Perry and working as his assistant until his death.
The Justice Department said Iwamasa injected Perry with ketamine on the day he died, Oct. 28, 2023.
California prosecutors announced Thursday that Iwamasa, 59, of Toluca Lake, pleaded guilty Aug. 7 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
The assistant “admitted to repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training, including performing multiple injections on Perry on Oct. 28, 2023, the day Perry died,” the Justice Department said.
Matthew Perry had a live-in assistant and carer, Kenny Iwamasa, 59 (pictured together in August), admits to giving the late Friends star the ketamine that caused her death.
Perry had moved back into his newly remodeled home and was enjoying his hot tub when he died suddenly on October 28.
Also charged were Jasveen Sangha, 41, dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” of North Hollywood; Santa Monica physician Salvador Plasencia, 42; Eric Fleming, 54, of Hawthorne; and Dr. Mark Chavez, 54, of San Diego.
Police obtained text messages between the two doctors who conspired to sell ketamine to Perry, saying, “I wonder how much this idiot is going to pay” and “Let’s find out.”
Plasencia is charged with conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
According to his LinkedIn account, Iwamasa had helped manage Perry’s affairs for more than 25 years.
Sangha, a British and American citizen, is charged with a number of offenses, including one count of maintaining a drug-related premises, one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, one count of possession with intent to distribute ketamine, seven counts of distribution of ketamine and two counts of altering and falsifying documents or records related to the federal investigation.
Fleming admitted to distributing the ketamine that killed Perry and pleaded guilty on Aug. 8 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Fleming admitted to receiving 25 vials of ketamine from Sangha and delivering them to assistant Iwamasa four days before Perry’s death.
Prosecutors said Dr. Chavez agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, admitting that he sold the drug to Plasencia and obtained supplies of it by “making false statements to a wholesale ketamine distributor and submitting a fraudulent prescription in the name of a former patient without that patient’s knowledge or consent.”
Just two months before her shocking passing and a few days after her 54th birthday, Perry and Iwamasa were spotted shopping at the Nike store at The Grove in Los Angeles.
DailyMail.com can reveal that the Friends star and Iwamasa had been living in a $49,000-a-month Beverly Hills property for just over a year while their Pacific Palisades pad underwent renovations.
Perry lived in a Beverly Hills hideaway with Iwamasa until just a couple of weeks before her untimely death, DailyMail.com can reveal.
And it is he who, according to sources close to the star, discovered Perry’s lifeless body in the jacuzzi of his recently renovated house on October 28.
The actor had been renting a three-bedroom hillside home overlooking Beverly Hills and the ocean for $49,000 a month for more than a year while his $6 million home in Pacific Palisades was under renovation.
He lived in the rented house with Iwamasa, an executive assistant who helped manage Perry’s affairs for more than 25 years.
Homeowner John Malakzad identified Iwamasa as “an individual who lived with Perry and was watching him.”
Iwamasa had been pictured driving Perry, 54, around Los Angeles running errands and leaving the Beverly Hills home in the morning, according to photographs obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
The Friends actor had moved back into his remodeled Pacific Palisades home less than a month before he was found dead by a “personal assistant.”
Iwamasa, his live-in personal assistant, is believed to have been the one who found his body.
Earlier this year in February, Perry was spotted outside the Beverly Hills property as furniture was delivered to the secret hideaway.
The actor had been seen in the house regularly since October 2022.
Aerial images show Perry’s pool and hot tub at his $6 million home in Pacific Palisades, where he was found dead late last month at age 54.
Iwamasa wrote on his LinkedIn page that he worked as an “executive assistant” employed by Perry’s manager, Doug Chapin.
His duties include: ‘Executive Assistant to Personal Manager with responsibilities for 25 years (ongoing) for client Matthew Perry (‘Friends’; actor, writer and producer).’
“I do well in chaotic situations that require order,” he adds. “I am discreet, loyal and respect absolute confidentiality.
‘I love deadlines, contracts, putting the dots on the i’s and resolving confusing situations and projects.’
Just two months before her unexpected death, and days after her 54th birthday, Perry and Iwamasa had been spotted shopping together at The Grove in Los Angeles, DailyMail.com reported at the time.
One of Iwamasa’s relatives who lives in Los Angeles confirmed to DailyMail.com that the assistant had been living with Perry in recent months, although the relative had not spoken to Iwamasa since the actor’s death.
Perry’s final Instagram post shows him making the most of the hot tub overlooking his coastal neighborhood on a moonlit night on Oct. 23, five days before his death.
“Oh, so warm water swirling around you makes you feel good?” she captioned the post.
Perry’s autopsy report listed the cause of death as “acute effects of ketamine.”
The report said she had high levels of the tranquilizing drug in her blood and likely fell unconscious and slipped underwater in her hot tub.
“Contributing factors to Mr. Perry’s death included drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine (used to treat opioid use disorder),” the Los Angeles medical examiner said in a statement. “The cause of death was an accident.”
First responders revealed that when Perry’s assistant found him, he was underwater. The assistant lifted his head up in a desperate attempt to get him to breathe.
When the Los Angeles Fire Department arrived at his Pacific Palisades home, the actor was later determined to be dead.
This comes after a 15-second dispatch call emerged that revealed the moment his assistant called 911 to report a possible cardiac arrest.
Perry had been open about his past struggles with alcohol and substance abuse, but said in recent interviews that he was clean and sober.
Perry wrote in his memoir, published last year, that he had spent $9 million trying to quit drugs and revealed he had attended 6,000 AA meetings, gone to rehab 15 times and been in detox 65 times.
First responders reportedly found antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications on the property, but there was no sign of any illegal drugs.
