A June 2024 report said law-enforcement sources believed multiple people could be charged over the ketamine supplied to Matthew Perry. Federal prosecutors announced charges against five people on August 15, 2024; by May 27, 2026, all five had been sentenced. The criminal case concerned how Perry obtained and received ketamine outside legitimate medical care. Separately, the Los Angeles County medical examiner ruled that acute ketamine effects caused his death and classified it as an accident.
What the June 2024 report said
On June 26, 2024, ABC News summarized a report citing law-enforcement sources who said multiple people could be charged as investigators closed in on who supplied Perry with ketamine. That was a contemporaneous expectation, not an announcement of charges or a final decision by prosecutors. The available ABC News summary is ABC News’s June 26, 2024 video listing.
Formal federal charges followed on August 15, 2024. The case later reached its sentencing stage in 2026, so the June report should be read as an early indication of a developing investigation rather than the final case outcome.
What the medical examiner determined
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner’s December 2023 autopsy report determined: “Mr. Matthew Perry’s cause of death is determined to be from the acute effects of ketamine.” It classified the manner of death as accident, drug and drowning related, and listed drowning, coronary artery disease, and buprenorphine effects as contributing factors. The report said no signs of foul play were suspected in the death determination. The report is available through the Matthew Perry Foundation.
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The autopsy recorded ketamine at 3,540 ng/mL in peripheral blood and 3,271 ng/mL in central blood. It cited 1,000–6,000 ng/mL as a typical monitored surgical-anesthesiologic range. That comparison does not mean Perry was in a monitored medical setting or that the circumstances were safe.
The report said Perry had received ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety, but his last known treatment was about a week and a half before his death. It concluded the ketamine present at death could not have come from that infusion, citing the drug’s half-life of three to four hours or less.
Who was charged
On August 15, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced charges against five people: Jasveen Sangha, Salvador Plasencia, Erik Fleming, Kenneth Iwamasa, and Mark Chavez. The government described alleged ketamine distribution and administration connected to Perry. At the time of that announcement, it stressed that charges were allegations and defendants were presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Read the Justice Department’s charging announcement.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the announcement: “We allege each of the defendants played a key role in his death by falsely prescribing, selling, or injecting the ketamine that caused Matthew Perry’s tragic death.” That was the government’s characterization of its allegations, not the medical examiner’s cause-and-manner determination.
How the case ended
Later court outcomes resolved the cases against all five defendants. The Justice Department’s April 8, 2026 update said Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal counts and was sentenced to 180 months, or 15 years. It also reported that Sangha and Fleming sold Perry 51 vials of ketamine in October 2023, supplied through his assistant. The same update said Plasencia was serving a 30-month sentence after pleading guilty to four distribution counts, while Chavez had pleaded guilty and received probation, home detention, and community service. See the DOJ sentencing update on Sangha and the other defendants.
On May 27, 2026, the Justice Department reported that Iwamasa was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death and serious bodily injury. The department described him as the fifth and final defendant sentenced in connection with Perry’s death. Its May 27 sentencing announcement completed the public sentencing sequence.
Why the medical finding and criminal case are distinct
The medical examiner addressed the physical cause and manner of death. Prosecutors and courts addressed the alleged and later adjudicated conduct through which ketamine was supplied and administered. The autopsy’s accident classification is not itself a ruling on criminal responsibility; likewise, the criminal sentences do not change the medical examiner’s determination of cause of death.
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