The doctor who sold Matthew Perry ketamine has a new argument against his prison sentence: he says he was barely acting as a doctor at all.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 44, is asking the Ninth Circuit to toss his 30-month sentence and send the case back for resentencing, according to court documents. The filing argues the judge wrongly applied an enhancement for abusing a physician’s position of trust. By his lawyers’ account, Perry came to him for a reliable ketamine supply rather than real medical care, which they say makes their client a dealer, not a doctor who betrayed a patient.
Plasencia pleaded guilty in July 2025 to four counts of distributing ketamine. At his sentencing in December, Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett told him he “exploited Mr. Perry’s addiction for your own profit.” Court filings showed he had texted another doctor that Perry was a “moron” who could be milked for money.
He was the first of five defendants sentenced, and now he points to the others to call his punishment too steep. Mark Chavez, the doctor who supplied him the drug, got eight months of home confinement. Perry had fought the addiction this case keeps circling for years, a struggle other stars are only now naming out loud.
Perry was found unresponsive in the jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home in October 2023. He was 54.
