John and Anne Darwin were within touching distance of each other yesterday, but as they stood in the dock they did not even exchange a glance.

Nor did their sons, sitting in the public gallery of Court 11 at Teesside Crown Court, try to look at their parents as they were sentenced for a £250,000 insurance fraud that “crushed their lives”.

Mark, 32, and Anthony Darwin, 29, were “the real victims” of a “determined, sustained and sophisticated” scheme that began when their father faked his own death six years and four months ago, Mr Justice Wilkie said. The brothers’ ordeal has so far lasted almost exactly as long as the sentences handed down to Anne and John Darwin, who were jailed for 6½ years and six years, three months respectively.

Anne Darwin, 56, showed no emotion as she was found guilty of 15 counts of fraud and money laundering at the end of an eight-day trial. She later looked straight ahead as the judge said that, despite her efforts to put all the blame on her husband with her defence of marital coercion, he was convinced that she had played her part in the fraud “efficiently and wholeheartedly”.

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

• Canoe man and Bond boost Panama tourism

Multimedia

• Pictures: the great canoe fraud

John Darwin, 57, by contrast, kept his head bowed throughout the hearing as the judge described him as the “driving force” behind the plan.

He said that the couple’s scheme was “born out of your desperation having become financially overstretched and being too stubborn and lacking in insight to accept the lawful consequences of your folly.

“You both emigrated to a country which you no doubt thought would put you beyond the law and to that end organised and salted away your ill-gotten gains,” he said. The pair, who were separated only by a security guard, stood motionless.

“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 judge described the case as “virtually unique”, adding: “Although the sums involved are not as high as some reported cases, the duration of the offending, its multifaceted 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.”

Rejecting the couple’s claim that John Darwin reappeared in London last December in order to pay back the money, he said that Darwin had “belatedly realised that you had lost something irreplaceable in betraying your sons and you were compelled, however hopelessly and briefly, to reconcile yourself to them”.

Peter Makepeace, representing Darwin, said that his hope of being reconciled with his children would sustain him throughout his time in prison and “through what is presumably to be a very lonely existence when he is released”. Neither Mark nor Anthony, sharing a room with their father for the first time since he was arrested at the latter’s house in Basingstoke on December 4, reacted visibly as the barrister added: “That may be as fantastical and unrealistic as the views he has held at times throughout his life.”

Mr Makepeace said that Darwin, who for 51 years was a hard-working man and “exemplary father figure”, was now “in many ways a broken man” who had been bullied in the 233 days he had so far spent in custody and was taking medication for depression.

The former prison guard, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges including a false passport in the name John Jones, now looked upon the time he was supposedly dead as a period of “dreams and nightmares”, he said.

Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood, who led the investigation, described Anne Darwin as “a compulsive liar” whose behaviour towards her children and friends was despicable.

He said that there may yet be more revelations to come - “I don’t think we have really got to the bottom of everything here today” - but meanwhile the couple “have been shown to be liars and they have received a substantial sentence”.

Having spoken to Mark and Anthony after the sentencing, he added: “They are devastated. I just hope that they can go away from the court building today and move on with their lives.”

The two key questions

Why did John Darwin come back to Britain?

Days after his reappearance Anne Darwin told a journalist that her husband had “had enough of being dead”. Both she and John Darwin have always maintained that he came back to repay the money they had illegally acquired. Many - including Mr Justice Wilkie - are sceptical about that, and there has been speculation about affairs on her part and an “almighty row”.

It is possible the couple became aware that Cleveland Police had obtained a court order last October and had begun to investigate her bank accounts. It is believed, however, that he came back to Britain only so that he could resurrect his real identity and thus obtain a permanent visa for Panama

What happens to the money?

The Darwins’ full Panamanian fortune, which is worth at least $1 million (£504,000) may never be fully recovered. £155,000 has been “repatriated” to Britain but another £220,000 remains contractually stuck in a Panama bank account until May 2010

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