LOS ANGELES (AP) — The wide-ranging prosecution in the death of “Friends” star Matthew Perry is coming to a close. Five people have pleaded guilty for various roles in supplying the actor with ketamine, the drug that killed him at age 54 in 2023. Three of them have been sentenced. The last two will be sentenced in the coming days.
Here's a look at each person.
Perry’s 60-year-old longtime live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa was intimately involved in the actor’s illegal ketamine use, acting as his drug messenger and personally giving him injections — six to eight per day in the last days of his life — according to his plea agreement.
“Shoot me up with a big one,” Iwamasa told authorities Perry said to him on Oct. 23, 2023. After several injections, the assistant left him at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and returned to find Perry dead in his hot tub. An autopsy found the primary cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning as a secondary cause.
Iwamasa made nearly all of the illegal drug buys on Perry’s behalf, working in coordination with his co-defendants. One of them, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, taught him how to give Perry the injections.
Iwamasa was quick to participate with police and prosecutors, becoming the first to reach a plea deal as they sought to use him as a key witness against other defendants.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: One count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
SENTENCE: He’s scheduled to become the final defendant sentenced on May 27.
WHAT THEY SAID: Iwamasa is the only defendant who has yet to give public comment.
Prosecutors say she was known as “The Ketamine Queen,” because of her jet-setting, drug dealing lifestyle. Her lawyers say authorities made up that nickname to feed a media frenzy.
Jasveen Sangha did admit to running a serious drug operation, selling Perry the dose of ketamine that he took on the day he died, and causing the death of another man, 33-year-old Cody McLaury, in 2019.
Like the other defendants, Sangha had no previous convictions.
But, prosecutors said, and a judge agreed, that unlike the other defendants whose actions were atypical, she had been dealing drugs including ketamine, methamphetamine and cocaine for at least five years from her home.
Sangha is a 42-year-old who was born in Britain, raised in the United States and has dual citizenship. Her social media accounts showed her in posh spaces alongside rich-and-famous faces in Spain, Japan and Dubai, London and Los Angeles.
Sangha went to high school in Calabasas, California — perhaps best known as home to the Kardashians — and went to college at the University of California, Irvine, graduating in 2005 and going to work at Merrill Lynch. She later got an MBA from the Hult International Business School in London.
Her lawyers presented that personal history as evidence that she was an otherwise upstanding citizen, but prosecutors used the same facts to argue she didn't need to sell drugs but did so for greed and glamour.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: Three counts of distribution of ketamine, one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury, and one count of using her home for drug distribution.
SENTENCE: She was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the longest so far.
WHAT THEY SAID: “These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Sangha said at sentencing, adding that her choices had “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends.”
Fleming, 56, was working as a drug addiction counselor when a mutual friend he had with Perry told him that the actor was seeking ketamine, according to filings from prosecutors.
Fleming’s lawyers said he was a former television and film producer whose career had been ravaged by substance abuse, and that after gaining hard-won sobriety he became a counselor.
But he had badly relapsed when approached about Perry, and connected the actor with Sangha to buy her product.
In all, prosecutors say, Fleming delivered 50 vials of Sangha’s ketamine for Perry’s use, marking up the price to make a profit, including 25 vials sold for $6,000 to the actor four days before his death.
Authorities found him early in the investigation and lawyers on both sides agreed he was immediately and extraordinarily cooperative. He gave up Sangha, and became the first to appear in court and enter a guilty plea.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: One count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
SENTENCING: He is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. Prosecutors have asked for 2 1/2 years in prison. The defense has asked for three months followed by nine months in a residential treatment program.
WHAT THEY SAID: “I procured ketamine for Matthew Perry because I wanted the money and because I thought I was doing a favor for a friend,” Fleming wrote in a presentencing letter to the court. “I never contemplated the worst possible outcome. This grievous failure will haunt me forever.”
“I wonder how much this moron will pay?”
That was a text message Plasencia sent to a fellow doctor when he learned Perry was looking for illegal, off-the-books ketamine, according to a plea agreement where the doctor admitted to selling 20 vials of the drug to the actor in the weeks before his death.
Plasencia, a 44-year-old Los Angeles-area doctor known to patients as “Dr. P,” was one of the main targets of the prosecution and had been headed for a joint trial with Sangha when he reached the plea agreement last year.
Perry was connected to Plasencia through another patient. The actor had been getting ketamine legally from his regular doctor as treatment for depression, an off-label but increasingly common use of the surgical anesthetic. But he wanted more than that doctor would prescribe.
Plasencia admitted to injecting Perry with some of the initial vials he provided, and left more for Iwamasa to inject, despite the fact that Perry froze up and his blood pressure spiked after a dose.
Plasencia graduated from UCLA's medical school in 2010 and had not been subject to any medical disciplinary actions before the Perry case.
PLEADED GUILTY TO: Four counts of distribution of ketamine.
SENTENCE: 2 1/2 years in prison, two years of probation and a $5,600 fine.
WHAT THEY SAID: Plasencia cried at his sentencing as he imagined the day he would have to tell his 2-year-old son “about the time I didn’t protect another mother’s son. It hurts me so much.”
Chavez, a San Diego doctor who ran a ketamine clinic, was the source of the doses that Plasencia sold to Perry.
Chavez admitted to obtaining the ketamine from a wholesale distributor on false pretenses and passing it along.
Chavez, 55, graduated from UCLA's medical school in 2004. He has surrendered his medical license.
CHARGE: One count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
SENTENCING: Eight months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.
WHAT THEY SAID: “I just want to say my heart goes out to the Perry family,” Chavez said at sentencing.
Versions of this story previously ran on Aug. 15, 2024, and Sept. 3, 2025.
FILE - Actor Matthew Perry arrives at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 23, 2012. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
LONDON (AP) — King Charles III will present the U.K. government's legislative program to Parliament on Wednesday as uncertainty clouds the future of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's leadership. Starmer on Tuesday defied calls for him to stand down, following a disastrous showing for his Labour Party in local and regional elections last week. Ahead of the King's Speech, he met with Health Secretary Wes Streeting, seen as one of his potential challengers, at his office in Downing Street.
Here's the latest:
Starmer and his wife, Victoria, left their official residence under a pelting of rain and pointed questions from the media as they headed to Parliament for the king’s speech.
The Starmers had no umbrellas as they left 10 Downing Street and walked a short distance to a waiting car.
Perhaps more unpleasant, though, were the questions coming from across the street.
“Will you resign Mr. Starmer? Are you just squatting in No. 10?,” a man yelled from the area where journalists gathered. “Prime minister, is your time up? Have you lost the country, Mr. Starmer?”
The Crown Regalia – the Imperial State Crown, the Cap of Maintenance and the Sword of State – has arrived at the House of Lords ahead of the king’s speech.
The ancient symbols of royal authority come in their own carriage, Queen Alexandra’s State Coach,
The most famous symbol of the monarchy, the Imperial State Crown, will be worn by King Charles III during the state opening ceremony.
It contains 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, five rubies and more than 270 pearls, and weighs more than a kilogram.
Unions affiliated with the Labour Party called for a plan to be put in place to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The Trade Union and Labour Organisation, a group of 11 unions, said the party could not “continue on its current path.”
“It’s clear that the prime minister will not lead Labour into the next election, and at some stage a plan will have to be put in place for the election of a new leader,” the group said.
The King’s Speech dates back to at least the 15th century, and the traditions highlight that history.
The first event got underway early Wednesday when the Yeomen of the Guard — a group of ceremonial bodyguards who still wear traditional red and gold uniforms from the Tudor period — performed a symbolic “search” of the Houses of Parliament for explosives. The tradition is a reminder of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot in which Roman Catholic rebels tried to kill Protestant King James I by blowing up the building during the State Opening of Parliament.
The king will travel in a carriage, as one might expect. A separate coach carries the Imperial State Crown, the Cap of Maintenance and Sword of State.
Meanwhile, a lawmaker goes to the palace as a symbolic hostage to ensure the king’s safe return. It is said the hostage is treated like royalty.
Starmer met privately Wednesday with a cabinet member who could challenge him for the leadership of the Labour Party.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting met for less than 20 minutes with Starmer at his 10 Downing Street residence.
Streeting is considered one of the top rivals as Starmer resists calls to step aside after the party’s disastrous showing in last week’s local elections across the U.K.
Streeting did not speak with reporters as he left the meeting.
The monarch traditionally travels from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament, a distance of less than a mile, in a horse-drawn carriage. He then dons the Imperial State Crown and the robe of state before leading a procession into the chamber of the unelected House of Lords.
A Lords official called Black Rod, named for the ebony rod he or she carries, then goes to the House of Commons to summon the chamber’s members to a joint sitting of Parliament. The doors to the Commons chamber are slammed in Black Rod’s face to symbolize the chamber’s independence from the monarchy, and they aren’t opened until Black Rod strikes the doors three times.
Once members of the Commons have crowded into the Lords’ chamber, the king delivers a speech written by the government and laying out its legislative program for the coming session of Parliament.
After the speech is read and the king leaves, the two houses of Parliament begin several days of debate on its contents.
At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Starmer said he took responsibility for the losses in last week’s elections but would fight on.
As Cabinet members left 10 Downing Street, some voiced their support for the embattled prime minister.
Works and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said nobody publicly challenged Starmer at the meeting, while Business Secretary Peter Kyle said the prime minister was showing “really steadfast leadership.”
Later, Starmer’s deputy David Lammy warned Labour lawmakers that the only beneficiary of the party’s “navel-gazing” is the populist right and the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, in particular.
“He has my full support, and what I say to colleagues is, look, let’s just step back,” he said. “Take a breath.”
On Tuesday, several junior ministers, some of whom were elected for the first time in Labour’s landslide election victory in July 2024, resigned and urged Starmer to do the same.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, minister of housing, communities and local government, was the first to quit, urging Starmer “to do the right thing for the country.”
She was followed by Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister and a prominent member of the Labour Party. In her resignation letter, she described Starmer as a “good man fundamentally” but unable to make bold changes.
Despite the party’s dominant win driving out the Conservatives after 14 years in power, Labour’s popularity has plunged and Starmer is getting much of the blame.
The reasons include a series of policy missteps, a perceived lack of vision on the prime minister’s part, a struggling British economy and questions over his judgment. Starmer’s choice of Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to Washington despite ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has continued to haunt him.
Starmer insisted Tuesday that he has no intention of resigning as calls grew louder within his Labour Party for him to step down and some junior members of his government quit in protest.
Starmer’s future has become a hot topic over the past few feverish days following historic losses for the Labour Party in local elections last week, which if repeated in a national election that has to be held by 2029, would see it overwhelmingly ejected from power.
Though no Cabinet member has quit or publicly stated the prime minister should step aside for a change in leader, there’s growing speculation that the ambitious health secretary, Wes Streeting, will inform Starmer that his days are numbered when they meet on Wednesday.
Streeting has many supporters within the parliamentary party, including some of those who resigned from Starmer’s government on Tuesday, which stoked speculation that Starmer could suffer the fate of Boris Johnson in 2022 when dozens of ministers quit en masse and forced his departure.
The King’s Speech is part of the state opening of Parliament, a traditional set piece of the political calendar. Many of the expected proposals have been announced previously, raising questions over Starmer’s capacity to win over his doubters.
The speech is expected to include proposals to address the cost of living crisis, create a national wealth fund to stimulate private investment in public infrastructure and tighten rules for asylum seekers.
It may also include the government’s controversial proposal to abolish jury trials for some cases in England and Wales, lower the voting age to 16 and introduce a “duty of candor” for public officials, requiring them to tell the truth and cooperate with investigations.
Larry the cat, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office leaves 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in London, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 as Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing the biggest threat yet to his authority after a growing number of disaffected lawmakers called for him to step down.(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
FILE - King Charles III looks up as he reads the King's Speech, during the State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords in London on July 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Pool, File)
Britain's Health Secretary Wes Streeting arrives in Downing Street for a meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, Wednesday, May 13, 2026.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets construction apprentices during a visit to London South Bank Technical College in London, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (Toby Melville/Pool Photo via AP)
