Anne Darwin, the wife of canoeist John Darwin who faked his own death and claimed life insurance, has been found guilty at Teesside Crown Court of all 15 of the fraud charges she faced.

Mrs Darwin, 56, was today described as “despicable” and “a compulsive liar” by the policeman who discovered that she had convinced her own children that their father was dead.

The couple swindled £250,000 from pensions and insurance companies after Mr Darwin went missing in March 2002. Rather than drowning in a canoeing accident in the North Sea as his wife claimed, however, he was driven to the railway station by his wife and hid out in a tent, later returning to the family home and living in secret under a false identity. Even the couple's sons were not allowed in on the secret.

The deception was finally exposed last December when he walked into a police station in London and said that he thought he was suffering from amnesia.

Anne Darwin's performance of a lifetime

Trial for fraud and money-laundering revealed an elaborate five-year-long deceit that fooled many people

Multimedia

• The police tapes

• Pictures: the great canoe fraud

BACKGROUND

• John Darwin's money-making schemes

• Canoe man and Bond boost Panama tourism

• Darwin wife: I wished he had drowned

Related Links

• Anne Darwin's performance of a lifetime

• John Darwin's money-making schemes

• Canoe man and Bond boost Panama tourism

Multimedia

• The police tapes

• Pictures: the great canoe fraud

Mrs Darwin admitted lying to police, the coroner, financial institutions and her two sons by maintaining the deception. She denied six counts of fraud and nine money laundering charges, but was today found guilty.

Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood, of Cleveland Police today said that Mrs Darwin, who told her own sons that their father was dead, was “out and out despicable, I just don’t have the time of day for her”.

“Instead of doing the decent thing and selling their properties and their car and paying back the people they owed, they just wouldn’t do it - they thought it was beneath them, they constructed this web of deceit,” he said.

She had attempted to claim that she was forced to cash in pension and insurance policies by her domineering partner.

Mrs Darwin, dressed in a beige jacket, smiled at the jury as they came in this morning, but she sat expressionless as the foreman read out the 15 unanimous guilty verdicts.

Her two sons, seated in the court gallery, one with his wife and the other with his girlfriend, showed no emotion as their mother was convicted.

Mr Darwin, a former teacher and prison guard, has pleaded guilty to seven charges of obtaining cash by deception and a passport offence. The couple are to be sentenced this afternoon.

Gale Gilchrist, a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "There is no doubt that this was a callous and calculated fraud. Both the Darwins were willing to deceive and manipulate members of their family and friends, and to waste considerable resources of the emergency services.

"In addition, they were willing to exploit any compassion extended to them."

Ms Gilchrist said that prosecutors would be working with the police to make sure that the Darwins were forced to repay the proceeds of their crimes.

The quarter of a million pounds is still in bank accounts held by Mr and Mrs Darwin and asset recovery teams will now work to extract that money.

Throughout the investigation, police and prosecutors have admitted that they were puzzled as to why Mr Darwin had suddenly reappeared in London so long after staging his own death. Today, the next stage of the Darwin's complex charade was exposed.

The visa Panama had granted to Mr Darwin in his false name of John Jones was running out and the only way he could remain with his wife in their jungle paradise was to resurface as John Darwin and obtain a brand new passport.

The couple thought they would be able to convince the British authorities that Mr Darwin had suffered from amnesia for long enough to renew his official documents, before slipping back to the Central American country, which has no extradition treaty with the UK.

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