With those words, Salvador Plasencia apologized to the family of the late beloved TV icon Matthew Perry for profiting off the actor’s addiction to the drug that ultimately brought about his death.
Plasencia, a physician, was sentenced on December 3 after agreeing to a plea deal. In exchange for admitting guilt to four counts of distributing ketamine, prosecutors dropped all other charges against him, including falsifying medical records. Plasencia surrendered his medical license and will serve 30 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. He will pay a fine of $5,600.
He knew exactly what he was doing to his famous victim.
Though Salvador Plasencia tried to frame his crime as a “mistake,” he knew exactly what he was doing to his famous victim—exploiting Perry’s desperate addiction to fatten his own purse, and perpetrating murder by degrees.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” he texted fellow doctor-turned-co-defendant Mark Chavez.
“Let’s find out.”
He found out. His patient would pay $2,000 for each $12 vial of ketamine.
“Rather than do what was best for Mr. Perry—someone who had struggled with addiction for most of his life—[Plasencia] sought to exploit Perry’s medical vulnerability for profit,” the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, which prosecuted the case, wrote in a statement.
It’s no secret that short- and long-term effects from ketamine include increased heart rate and blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, numbness, depression, amnesia, hallucinations and respiratory complications—right through to addiction and death.
For the money Plasencia bled from Perry in mere days, he can pay his court-ordered fine 10 times over.
At the sentencing, Plasencia told Perry’s family he was “just so sorry.”
So sorry.
Had Perry lived to buy more ketamine at $2,000 a pop, would Plasencia still be so sorry?
Had he not been caught, would he have texted his buddy, “Let’s see how much more this moron will pay?” then doubled the price—citing inflation?
More likely, Plasencia was “just so sorry” he was caught.
And what of Matthew Perry’s grieving family? How did they receive his crocodile-tear apology?
“Here was a life so entwined with ours and held aloft sometimes with duct tape and baling wire,” they wrote in a letter to the court. “And then those greedy jackals come out of the dark, and all the effort is for naught; it all crashes down.”
