Couple jailed for canoe death fraud (From Free Press Series)

Couple jailed for canoe death fraud

3:46pm Wednesday 23rd July 2008

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John and Anne Darwin were each jailed for more than six years for carrying out a £250,000 con by faking his death in a canoeing accident.

The 56-year-old wife was convicted by a jury at Teesside Crown Court of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering, while the husband admitted fraud at an earlier hearing.

Anne Darwin received six and a half years in jail. Her husband got six years and three months.

The couple tricked the police, insurance companies and even their two sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, into believing he drowned in the North Sea in 2002 - only for Mr Darwin to turn up at a London police station last year. They were undone by a photograph of the grinning couple taken in Panama four years after he disappeared.

Mr Justice Wilkie said the "real victims" of the Darwins were their sons.

He told the couple: "Although the sums involved are not as high as some reported cases, the duration of the offending, its multi-faceted nature and in particular the grief inflicted over the years to those who in truth were the real victims, your own sons, whose lives you crushed, make this a case which merits a particularly severe sentence."

The couple stood with their hands clasped in front of them, separated by a burly security guard, as the sentences were handed down. They avoided eye contact with each other as they stood in the dock.

Their sons, who showed no emotion as Mrs Darwin was found guilty, had no direct view of their shamed parents from their position at the back of a crowded public gallery. It was the first time they had been in the same room as their father since his arrest in December last year.

After their evidence last week, they had been in court every day of their mother's trial.

Addressing the defendants, the judge said: "I accept you, John, were the driving force behind this deceit. You, Anne Darwin, perhaps initially unconvinced, played an instrumental rather than organising role. Nevertheless, you contributed to its success and played your part efficiently. In my judgment, you operated as a team, each contributing to the joint venture."

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