LOS ANGELES (AP) — A doctor charged with giving Matthew Perry ketamine in the month leading up to the “Friends” star's overdose death will plead guilty, according to an agreement filed in court Monday.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, according to the signed document filed in federal court in Los Angeles. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop three additional counts of distribution of ketamine and two counts of falsifying records.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the plea carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. They said Plasencia is expected to formally plead guilty in the coming weeks.
According to a co-defendant, Plasencia in a text message called the actor a “moron” who could be exploited for money. The physician had been one of the primary targets of the prosecution, along with a woman accused of being a ketamine dealer. Three other defendants, including another doctor, agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation.
Plasencia and the woman, Jasveen Sangha, had been scheduled to face trial in August. An email to his attorney seeking comment was not immediately answered.
Perry was found dead by his assistant on Oct. 28, 2023. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.
The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor in a legal but off-label treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him.
Plasencia admitted in his plea agreement that another patient connected him with Perry, and that starting about a month before Perry's death, he illegally supplied the actor with 20 vials of ketamine totaling 100 mg of the drug, along with ketamine lozenges and syringes.
He admitted to enlisting the other doctor, Mark Chavez, to supply the drug for him, according to the court filings.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia texted Chavez, according to Chavez's plea agreement. The two met up the same day in Costa Mesa, halfway between the Los Angeles area where Plasencia practiced and San Diego, where Chavez practiced, and exchanged several vials of ketamine, the filings said.
After selling the drugs to Perry for $4,500, Plasencia allegedly asked Chavez if he could keep supplying them so they could become Perry’s “go-to,” prosecutors said.
Plasencia admitted to visiting Perry's house twice and injecting him with ketamine. He also left ketamine behind and showed Perry's personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject it, according to Iwamasa's plea agreement. The doctor later met up with Iwamasa and gave him more ketamine for Perry, according to the document.
Perry was also getting ketamine from another source, Sangha, who prosecutors allege was a major dealer and supplied the dose that killed the actor.
Sangha has pleaded not guilty — making her the only one of the five people charged in Perry’s death who has not entered a plea agreement. She remains jailed as she awaits trial. Plasencia was freed on bond after his initial court appearances.
Erik Fleming, a friend of Perry who said he acted as a middleman and drug messenger, has also pleaded guilty and has been cooperating with prosecutors.
None of the defendants has yet been sentenced. Plasencia's plea deal makes no specific sentencing guarantees.
Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit.
FILE - Matthew Perry appears at the GQ Men of the Year Party in West Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
