The suspects, including a woman known in Los Angeles as the “Ketamine Queen,” were part of “a vast underground criminal network” that distributed the drug to the actor and others, District Attorney Martin Estrada said.
“These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry's addiction problems to enrich themselves,” Estrada said at a news conference in Los Angeles.
According to Anne Milgram, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, all of the suspects played a role in falsely prescribing, selling or injecting the ketamine that contributed to the actor's death.
Two of the individuals have been arrested and are expected to be charged later Thursday (local time). They were Jasveen Sangha, 41, of North Hollywood and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 42, of Santa Monica.
Perry died at age 54 from the “acute effects” of ketamine and other factors that caused him to lose consciousness and drown in his hot tub last October, an autopsy said. For months, Los Angeles homicide detectives and federal agents have been investigating how Perry obtained the prescription drug.
A December 2023 autopsy report found that Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” which combined with other factors to cause him to lose consciousness and disappear underwater in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home.
Toxicology tests showed Perry's system contained dangerously high levels of ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties. Normally, people with that much ketamine in their systems would be under general anesthesia during surgery and monitored by professionals, they said.
Other factors that contributed to his death included drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of the opioid addiction drug buprenorphine, which was also found in his system.
Perry had publicly acknowledged that he had struggled with drug and alcohol abuse for decades, including during the years he played Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s sitcom. Friends.
Witness statements in the autopsy report said he had undergone ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety. But his last known treatment was a week and a half before his death, so the ketamine found in his system by coroners would have been introduced since that last infusion, the autopsy said.