Kenneth Iwamasa, the personal assistant to Friends actor Matthew Perry, was sentenced on Wednesday, 27 May 2026, to three years and five months in federal prison for his role in the ketamine overdose death that killed Perry on 28 October 2023.
Iwamasa, 60, appeared before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in a federal court in Los Angeles. He was also ordered to serve two years of probation and pay a fine of $10,000 (approximately R183,000). He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
As reported by CNN, Iwamasa was the last of five defendants to be sentenced in a prosecution that stretched across two and a half years.
Iwamasa’s role in Perry’s final days
Iwamasa was not simply present during the period leading up to Perry’s death. Prosecutors described him as the actor’s enabler, drug messenger and de facto doctor. He sourced and administered ketamine injections directly to Perry in the weeks before his death, taking on a medical function he was entirely unqualified to perform.
He was the last person to see Perry alive and the person who found him dead in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home at the age of 54.
The case established that Perry had been receiving ketamine injections at a rate and dose that presented serious health risks, and that multiple people around him had enabled or profited from that access.
The other four defendants sentenced before Iwamasa included two medical doctors and two street-level ketamine suppliers. The prosecutions followed an investigation that began in the weeks after Perry’s death and expanded significantly as the full network of supply became clear.
Perry’s family and the betrayal they described
Perry’s family described the sentencing as exposing a heartbreaking betrayal by someone who occupied a position of deep personal trust. Iwamasa had worked for Perry for years, and the role of a personal assistant in the life of a major celebrity carries access and proximity that few people outside that world fully understand.
That proximity was what made the offence so serious in the eyes of the prosecution.
Perry’s death prompted widespread grief internationally, particularly given his decades-long run on Friends as Chandler Bing, a character that defined a generation of television comedy.
Perry had been open about his long struggle with addiction before his death, a struggle he documented in a memoir published in 2022.
What happens next in the Perry case
Iwamasa’s sentencing closes the prosecution phase of the investigation. With all five defendants sentenced, the case is effectively concluded from a criminal standpoint. No further charges are expected.
Perry’s estate and family may still pursue civil action, though no proceedings of that nature have been publicly confirmed. The broader question of how celebrities with known addiction histories are protected, or failed, by the people closest to them is one that the case has placed firmly back into public conversation.
