£½m canoe fraud cash clawed back

MORE than £500,000 has been clawed back from Anne Darwin, the wife of canoe conman John Darwin.

The money was recovered by the Crown Prosecution Service in a “painstaking operation” in both Yorkshire and Panama in connection with the insurance fraud over her husband’s faked death.

John Darwin ( above), 61, was reported missing in a canoe in the sea off Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, in March 2002.

While his wife collected hundreds of thousands of pounds in life insurance payouts, John Darwin hid in the marital home, while the couple’s two adult sons believed their father was dead.

Both John and Anne Darwin were found guilty of the deception in 2008 at Teesside Crown Court.

A CPS spokesman said: “A painstaking operation over the past two and a half years, has now recovered all the assets which Anne Darwin held as a result of the fraud, amounting to £501,641.39.”