JOHN and Anne Darwin were today each beginning jail sentences of more than six years for carrying out a "determined, sustained and sophisticated" £250,000 fraud by faking his death in a canoeing accident.

The couple did not acknowledge each other in the dock at Teesside Crown Court where they were sentenced for the swindle which deceived the police, a coroner, financial institutions and even their sons, Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29.

The sons were in court every day since they gave evidence against their mother, and were in the same room as their father for the first time since he was arrested in December last year.

It was an unhappy family reunion, as Mr Darwin, 57, was jailed for six years and three months, and Mrs Darwin, 56, for six-and-a-half years.

The sons did not react as the sentences were handed out, nor did they earlier in the day when, as revealed in later editions of the Evening Times, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on the six fraud charges and nine money laundering counts which their mother denied.

Their parents' deception - allowing them to think their father was dead for almost six years - was spelled out by Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood, outside court.

He said: "They are devastated. I just hope that they can go away from the court building today and move on with their lives."

Mr Justice Wilkie told the Darwins their sons' lives were "crushed" by the deception, and that meant a severe sentence was needed.

As the Darwins stood separated by a burly security guard, the judge said it was "borne out of your desperation at having become financially overstretched and your being too stubborn or lacking in insight to accept the lawful consequences of your financial folly".

By moving to Panama, the couple would have been beyond British jurisdiction, the judge said.

"You would in all likelihood have got away with it if you, John Darwin, had not decided to return to the UK and try to brazen it out with a further false story of amnesia."

The court heard the plan to hoax insurers into believing Mr Darwin was dead was hatched as the couple faced losing their imposing seafront home in Seaton Carew in 2002.

They had a 12-home property portfolio and were struggling to make mortgage repayments, when he paddled into the sea in his canoe and then disappeared.

With her husband living rough in Cumbria, the grey-haired former doctor's receptionist began the process of declaring him dead, and conning insurers and pension funds out of the £250,000.

Under the assumed identity John Jones, taken from a local child who died in infancy, Mr Darwin continued to run the couple's finances and travelled around the world.