A British woman convicted of insurance fraud with her husband for faking his death in a canoe accident has offered to repay nearly 600,000 pounds, lawyers said Wednesday.
The husband, John Darwin, is offering to pay back a nominal one pound of the money he received in the scam, which was revealed after he turned up at a London police station in 2007, five years after his disappearance.
John and Anne Darwin, now 58 and 57, were each jailed for over six years last July after details emerged of how they had planned a new life in Panama with the proceeds of insurance payout cash received following his “death.”
On Wednesday lawyers said she would pay 591,838 pounds (986,271 dollars, 655,728 euros), including 363,700 pounds in compensation for victims of the crime, and 228,138 pounds under Britain’s Proceeds of Crime Act.
Her husband has agreed to pay a nominal one pound because he has no financial assets, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Darwin was presumed dead after disappearing while canoeing in the sea in March 2002 near his home in Seaton Carew, northeast England.
But he reappeared on December 1, 2007 when he walked into a London police station, telling officers he could remember nothing of the last five years, and believed himself to be a missing person.
His wife was tracked down to Panama City and initially claimed shock at his reappearance, before being confronted with a photograph of the couple which emerged in 2007.
In subsequent comments to British newspapers as the full story came out, Darwin’s wife said she went along with his faked death to escape huge debts, and lived with him in secret for years.
