Billionaire banking heir and transatlantic personality Matthew Mellon has died at 54, reportedly while attending a rehabilitation centre in Mexico to deal with an admitted opioid dependency, after years of struggling with drug addiction.

His cousin Peter Stephaich confirmed Mellon’s death but declined on Tuesday to provide any details.

Mellon comes from the Mellon and Drexel families, of Bank of New York Mellon and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Although he chiefly lived in New York he also had a home in London’s exclusive Eaton Place. He married his first wife, Tamara Yeardye, co-founder of Jimmy Choo shoes, at Bleinheim Palace in 2000 at a lavish ceremony attended by friends that included Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley, and the couple became a fixture on the British fashion scene.

According to Mellon’s LinkedIn account and documents held at the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York, he attended the prestigious Wharton business school in Philadelphia, and later worked in fashion, telecommunications and finance. He reportedly made a fortune in cryptocurrency, most recently as an adviser for the digital currency company Ripple Labs.

Mellon also served for a time as the chairman of the finance committee of the Republican party in New York.

Mellon is survived by Tamara Mellon, his second wife, fashion designer Nicole Hanley Mellon, and three children.

Testifying at a 2006 trial where Mellon was acquitted of hiring a private detective to snoop into Tamara Mellon’s finances during their divorce, Tamara said she met her husband at Narcotics Anonymous when both were recovering from addiction.

His ex-wife wrote accounts of Mellon’s drug problems in a book, In My Shoes. Mellon died suddenly while attending rehab in Cancún, Mexico, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

A statement from the family was published in the New York Post.

It said, in part: “Mellon made his fortune in cryptocurrency, turning a $2m investment into $1bn. He is survived by his three children, Force, Olympia and Minty.”

Mellon had earlier told the publication about an addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin.