CPS recovers £40,000 from canoe-death fraud John Darwin

The Crown Prosecution Service has recovered £40,000 from John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a plot hatched with his wife to collect life insurance payouts.

John and Anne Darwin were convicted of fraud in 2008 and sentenced to six years in prison for a scam which raked in hundreds of thousands of pounds.

John faked his own death in March 2002, when he was reported missing in a canoe in the sea off Seaton Carew. His wife collected the life insurance while her husband hid out in a bedsit next door to the family home.

The couple were eventually caught five years later, after buying property in south America, and moving large sums of money abroad. In 2007, after a change in Panamanian visa laws meant closer scrutiny by the UK government which would uncover his new identity, John decided to fake amnesia and handed himself into police.

The Darwin's plan failed, after photos of them together surfaced online, and were then published in the Daily Mirror.

The £40,000 repayment brings the total amount recouped from the Darwins to £541,762.39.

It was taken from his pension; because he had pretended to be dead, his assets were all in his wife’s name, the court made an order for £1 and allowed the CPS to amend it should any assets, such as this pension, become available.

Nick Price, a CPS spokesperson, said: “When John Darwin devised his plan to defraud insurance companies, he didn’t think he’d get caught at all. But he also didn’t bank on the dedication and determination of my team to recover the money he stole – even seven years later."