A doctor pleaded guilty on Wednesday to giving Matthew Perry, who starred in the American TV series Friends, ketamine in the month leading up to his overdose death.

Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who entered the plea in US District Court in Los Angeles, faces up to 40 years in prison. He became the fourth among the five people charged in connection with Perry's death to plead guilty.

The authorities identified a fifth defendant, Jasveen Sangha, who they say was a drug dealer known to customers as the "ketamine queen." Sangha has been charged with supplying the dose that killed Perry. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial in August.

Although Plasencia did not provide Perry with the fatal dose of ketamine, he did supply the actor with the drug in the weeks before Perry was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in 2023.

A postmortem examination determined that Perry died from the acute effects of ketamine, a controlled substance that the recovering addict was taking as part of supervised therapy.

Plasencia was scheduled to stand trial in August, but last month he agreed to plead guilty to four counts of ketamine distribution, according to a document filed in court.

"He is fully accepting responsibility by pleading guilty to drug distribution. Dr. Plasencia intends to voluntarily surrender his medical license, acknowledging his failure to protect Mr. Perry, a patient who was especially vulnerable due to addiction," Plasencia's lawyers said.

Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse. This included the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the popular 1990s sitcom Friends.

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko