Jeffry M. Picower, a prominent philanthropist accused of reaping about $7 billion in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme, was found dead on Sunday afternoon in a swimming pool at his mansion in Palm Beach, Fla.

In the last year, Mr. Picower’s life had become a tangle of litigation arising from his disputed role in the Ponzi scheme operated by Mr. Madoff, who was arrested in December and pleaded guilty in March to operating a long-running fraud that cost thousands of victims billions of dollars.

The cause of Mr. Picower’s death is being investigated. According to a statement from the Palm Beach police, emergency personnel responded at 12:09 p.m. on Sunday to a call from Mr. Picower’s wife, Barbara. She said that she had found her husband at the bottom of the pool at the family home, an oceanfront property on South Ocean Boulevard. He could not be revived and was pronounced dead at 1:30 p.m. at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

An autopsy has been ordered to confirm the cause of death. William D. Zabel, a family lawyer, said that Mr. Picower, who was 67, had a history of “cardiac issues” and had Parkinson’s disease.