Mark Chavez, one of the two doctors charged in connection with the death of “Friends” actor Matthew Perry, is scheduled to plead guilty Wednesday to conspiring to distribute ketamine.
Chavez, 54, of San Diego, is the third of five defendants in the case to sign a plea deal with prosecutors. He made an initial appearance in Los Angeles federal court last month.
During that hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jean Rosenbluth ordered him released on $50,000 bond. She also ordered Chavez – who earlier this week, at a separate administrative hearing, agreed to surrender his California medical license – not to practice medicine.
Chavez, who remains free on $50,000 bond, could potentially face up to 10 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. A sentencing date will be scheduled during Wednesday’s hearing.
Perry was found dead last October in a hot tub behind his Pacific Palisades home.
Charges against the five defendants, including a live-in assistant and a woman known as the “Ketamine Queen,” were announced Aug. 15 by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles.
U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said the suspects are part of a “broad underground criminal network” that supplied ketamine to Perry and others, and “took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves.”
Chavez admitted in his plea agreement to selling the drug to another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, including ketamine that he had diverted from his former ketamine clinic.
Prosecutors said Chavez also obtained additional ketamine to transfer by lying to a wholesale ketamine distributor and by submitting a phony prescription in the name of a former patient without that patient’s knowledge or consent.
Two defendants, Jasveen Sangha, 41, a.k.a. the “Ketamine Queen,” and Plasencia, 42, both pleaded not guilty and are tentatively scheduled to go on trial March 4.
Local and federal authorities confirmed in May that they were investigating how Perry obtained the prescription drug ketamine, which contributed to his Oct. 28 death at age 54.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner determined the cause of death was “the acute effects of ketamine.”
Ketamine is approved by the DEA for use as an anesthetic. A nasal spray version is used to treat depression in a clinical setting, the agency DEA said.
In Perry’s 2022 best-selling memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” he discusses his years-long struggle with addiction. The “Friends” star, who played the character Chandler Bing in the series, says he went through detox dozens of times.
If convicted of all charges, Sangha would face a sentence between 10 years and life imprisonment. Plasencia would face up to 10 years in federal prison for each ketamine-related counts and up to 20 years for each records falsification count, prosecutors said.
