John Darwin, 57, and Anne Darwin, 56, were convicted for more than six years in prison. The two made everybody, including their two sons, believe that John had drowned in the North Sea off Teesside back in 2002, while he was canoeing. Yet, he reappeared last year, saying he had lost his memory.

They were jailed for fraud because they got £250,000 out of insurance firms. Their assets have been frozen and the authorities hope to get back the money. Still, police believe that they had £500,000 when they were arrested in December, in Panama.

The two wanted to start a new life in Panama after they had got into debt. John Darwin bought an apartment worth £28,000 in Panama and built a canoeing centre for tourists worth £198,000 and Anne gave £45,000 on a Toyota Land Cruiser.

John Darwin was sentenced to spend six years and three months in jail after he admitted faking his own death, and Anne Darwin got six years and a half for fraud. They were both convicted on Friday.

Mark Darwin, 32, and Anthony Darwin, 29, the couple’s sons, didn’t know anything about their parents’ plan. They gave the authorities evidence about their mother, when they found on the internet a photograph of the couple taken in Panama four years after John Darwin had disappeared.

Unat Direct and Norwich Union, two insurance companies, filed legal documents to proceed against the couple for the money they defrauded. There is a worldwide freeze on their assets and the process for them to return the money begun through the Proceeds of Crime Act.