John and Anne Darwin, the couple who staged a fatal canoeing accident in a £250,000 insurance scam, have been sentenced to a total of more than 12 years in jail.

Mr Darwin, 57, was sentenced to six years and three months after admitting seven charges of obtaining money by deception and a passport offence. His wife, who claimed that she was forced to take part in the scheme, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years after being convicted of 15 counts of fraud.

The decisions came just 90 minutes after Anne Darwin was found guilty at Teesside Crown Court of all of the charges she faced. The couple stood with their hands clasped in front of them as the sentences were handed down. Separated by a security guard, they did not look at each other once during sentencing.

Their two sons, seated in the court gallery, one with his wife and the other with his girlfriend, showed no emotion as they were jailed.

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

Judge Alan Wilkie ruled that even though Mr Darwin had admitted his guilt he should serve a similar sentence to his wife because he had been the orchestrator of the plot. He said the severe sentences were handed down because of the "cruelty and grief" inflicted on the Darwin children in a "virtually unique" fraud.

“I accept you, John, were the driving force behind this deceit,” he said. “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.

“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.”

Mrs Darwin, 56, was earlier 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.

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.

Mr Darwin, a former teacher and prison guard, has pleaded guilty to seven charges of obtaining cash by deception and a passport offence.

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 Darwins’ complex charade seems to have been exposed.

The visa Panama had granted to Mr Darwin in his false name of John Jones was apparently 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 appeared to believe that 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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