Canoe Man Darwin Launches Appeal

By Sky News SkyNews - Friday, September 5 03:53 pm

Back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin has lodged an appeal against his sentence for fraud.

Darwin, 58, and his wife Anne, 56, were both jailed for more than six years for their "determined, sustained and sophisticated" fraud.

Mrs Darwin has already lodged an appeal against her sentence and conviction.

The couple claimed more than £250,000 in insurance payments and pension payouts after pretending Mr Darwin had died at sea as part of a plot to avoid bankruptcy.

But detectives believe that at the time they were arrested last December, their assets, mostly in Panama, were worth £500,000.

Mr Darwin faked his death in 2002 and lived in secret in the bedsit he and his wife owned next door to their home at Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.

The couple fled to Panama once Mrs Darwin straightened out the couple's finances when the fraudulently claimed insurance money came through.

During her trial Mrs Darwin claimed she had been "trapped" by her husband's plan, which saw them start a new life in Panama.

Mr Darwin handed himself in at a London police station in November 2007 claiming to be suffering amnesia.

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