24 July 2008 10:00
John and Anne Darwin – the English couple behind the elaborate “dead canoeist” insurance scam – have each been sentenced to six years behind bars.
While John admitted faking his own death to police, Anne was found guilty of fraudulently claiming $512,000 in life insurance and helping her husband stage his disappearance.
The couple had lied to their two sons, friends, family and police since the “accident” happened back in 2002, but the story unravelled when John walked into a police station last December claiming to have amnesia.
Sentencing the pair as they stood alongside each other, Justice Alan Wilkie said the couple's sons, Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, had been the real victims of their swindle.
"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," he said.
Source: smh.com.au