if(not defined($ftps)) { die; } It's unnecessary because you use Debug => 1,. You're much better off using Croak => 1 in the constructor. The values for port and encryption are default, so you don't have to list them. Here's what I think you were after:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::FTPSSL;

my $ftps = Net::FTPSSL->new(
           'ftp.cpan.org',
           Debug  => 1,
           Croak  => 1
);
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