Madoff Investor Picower Found Dead in Swimming Pool

[WSJ_law_blog]

Some strange news out of Palm Beach, Fla., over the weekend: Jeffry Picower, a longtime friend of Bernie Madoff and a figure who had recently been under scrutiny in the criminal investigation surrounding Madoff’s fraud scheme, died on Sunday. Click here for Amir Efrati’s story in the WSJ and here for the NYT story. Click here, here, here and here for previous LB posts about Picower.

The Palm Beach Police Department said they responded to a 9-1-1 call just after noon Sunday from a woman who said she had just found her husband at the bottom of their swimming pool. Picower, 67 years old, was brought to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Marcia Horowitz, a spokeswoman for the Picower family, said Mr. Picower “had been in poor health.” In addition to suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he also had “a number of heart-related medical issues” for which he met regularly with cardiologists, she said.

The police department said that it is conducting an investigation as “standard operating procedure in any drowning.”

Picower was one of several high-profile Madoff investors initially viewed as victims of Madoff’s fraud who was later revealed to be among the biggest beneficiaries of it, having booked billions of dollars in profits. Federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan are looking into whether Picower or several other longtime Madoff associates had knowledge of or complicity in the fraud, people familiar with the matter have said. Picower has not been charged with wrongdoing.

A court-appointed trustee recovering assets for Madoff victims alleged that Mr. Picower knew or should have known of the fraud because he requested — and received — outsized gains for his accounts. The Picowers made $7.2 billion in profits from investing with Mr. Madoff since the 1970s, according to court documents filed by the trustee, Irving Picard.

But a lawyer for Picower denied the allegations, saying his client had no knowledge of fraud until after Madoff was arrested last year. The Picowers “were not perpetuating Madoff’s Ponzi scheme by withdrawing billions of dollars from their [Madoff] accounts,” the lawyer wrote in a court filing that attempted to dismiss the trustee’s lawsuit. “If anything, such large withdrawals would have placed an extraordinary strain on the scheme.”

A Bronx, N.Y., native, Picower earned a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s in business from Columbia University and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School, according to public records and former colleagues.

hmmm---suspicious I think