Canoe man facing long prison sentence after admitting fraud

John Darwin, the former prison officer accused of staging a canoeing accident at sea to fake his death, was yesterday facing a long prison sentence after admitting to a string of fraud charges totalling nearly £250,000.

Darwin, 57, pleaded guilty to seven charges of deception and one charge of making false statements to procure a passport. He denied nine counts of converting criminal property and was told he would not face trial for those charges, which will be left on file.

His wife, Anne, 55, a former doctor's receptionist, who denied six counts of deception and nine charges of converting criminal property, will stand trial later this year.

Darwin briefly squeezed his wife's hand, as they both stood in the dock at Leeds crown court yesterday, before admitting his deception.

His solicitor, Peter Makepeace, told the 30-minute hearing that Darwin, who had worked as a teacher before joining the prison service, accepted that a long jail term was inevitable. He said: "Mr Darwin has been in custody since early December and it has been an extremely difficult time for him. There have been self-harming issues while he has been in prison."

The couple were remanded to separate jails in December after Darwin returned from the dead by wandering into a London police station, saying he thought he was a missing person. He had been pronounced dead in 2003 by the Hartlepool coroner Malcolm Donnelly after a huge air-sea search that failed to find any trace of him or of his canoe off Seaton Carew, where he and his wife had retired to run a seafront B&B. It has since been alleged that Darwin was living secretly next door to his wife at the seaside home in Seaton Carew for much of the time after being declared dead.

Some time after Darwin appeared at the police station, a photograph of him and his wife emerged, appearing to show the couple in Panama with a property agent in July 2006 - more than three years after the UK coroner recorded an open verdict on Darwin's death.

Cleveland police said that the couple's sons, Mark and Anthony, were "innocent victims" of the fraud who had genuinely thought that their father had died. When their mother returned to the UK from the central American country she was arrested upon arrival at Manchester airport.

Flanked by three security guards in the dock at Leeds, John regularly paused between responses to the judge to check a sheet of notes. Anne said "not guilty" 15 times, covering each of the charges. Her trial starts on July 14 at Teesside crown court.

The judge, Justice Wilkie, agreed to a pre-sentence report on Darwin's psychiatric condition but remanded him in custody until the end of his wife's trial.

Anne denied the additional charges read out, including fraud concerning a teachers' pension fund, several banks and the employees bereavement scheme of the Department for Work and Pensions. The charges include dishonest transactions totalling £30,000 carried out in the names of the couple's sons.