Five mense have been charged over the death of Friends actor Matthew Perry.
Perry, who played the character Chandler Bing on the hit TV sitcom from 1994-2004, was found unresponsive in his swimming pool in October last year at the age of 54, sparking a global outpouring of grief from fans and colleagues.
An autopsy found the cause of his death was “the acute effects of ketamine”, a controlled drug which the recovering addict was understood to be taking as part of supervised therapy.
Last week doctors, Dr. Mark Chavez and Salvador Plasencia, drug merts Eric Fleming and Jasveen Sangha, and Perry’s long-time live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa were all indicted on various charges.
According the prosecution, the doctors falsified documents to get $55 000 in cash for ketamine from the merts, while Plasencia taught Iwamasa how to inject the drug.
Chavez, in a text to Plasencia, wrote: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”
US Attorney Martin Estrada says: “These defendants took advantage of Mr Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong.
“They knew what they were doing was risking great danger to Mr Perry, but they did it anyway
“In the end, these defendants were more interested in profiting off Mr Perry than caring for his well-being.”
According to Iwamasa’s plea deal, he had been administering ketamine — which is used medically for anesthesia to help patients detach from their pain — to Perry for about a month.
In the court papers, Iwamasa says he injected the Fools Rush In star three times on the day of his death.
Iwamasa claims Perry told him to give him a “big one” before he left to do errands and returned to find him floating in his jacuzzi.