Husband and wife fraudsters John and Anne Darwin were each jailed for more than six years today for the £250,000 insurance fraud in which he faked his own death in a canoeing accident.

John Darwin was jailed for six years and three months at Teesside Crown Court today having previously admitted the charges.

His wife Anne was sentenced to six years and six months after she was convicted for her role in the fraud at the same court earlier today.

Anne Darwin, 56, had claimed her "domineering" husband forced her to go through with the plan to con insurance and pension companies by faking his death at sea.

But the jury at Teesside Crown Court rejected her defence and convicted her today of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering after a seven day trial.

Darwin tricked everyone, including her sons Mark and Anthony, with "superb aplomb", maintaining the lie for over five years while she and her former prison officer husband set up a new life in Panama.

Sentencing the couple this afternoon Mr Justice Wilkie said the "real victims" of the Darwins were their sons. He told the couple: "Although the sums involved are not as high as some reported cases, the duration of the offending, its multi-faceted nature and in particular the grief inflicted over the years to those who in truth were the real victims, your own sons, whose lives you crushed, make this a case which merits a particularly severe sentence."

Anne Darwin's defence of "marital coercion" was undermined when the prosecution produced emails they sent each other.

Darwin showed no reaction as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts after four hours of deliberation.

Mark Darwin sat in the public gallery with his brother Anthony as the verdicts were read out in a silent courtroom.

Neither of the sons reacted to the guilty verdicts.

The couple will be sentenced at 2pm.

The Darwins hatched the plot as they hurtled towards bankruptcy.

The elaborate plan involved Mr Darwin paddling out into the North Sea in March, 2002, in his home-made canoe, within sight of their home in Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, then going into hiding while his wife claimed he was missing at sea.

She raised the alarm after driving him in secret to Durham railway station.

A huge air sea rescue operation was mounted - without success.

Mrs Darwin turned on the tears when she broke the news of their father's disappearance to her sons.

I don't think we have really got to the bottom of everything here today. I'm sure there will be more stories that come to light but she has clearly been brought to task for the offences she committed Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood

Mark Darwin, 32, told the court: "It crushed my world."

It was only five-and-a-half years later that they learned the truth.

With her husband living rough in Cumbria, the grey-haired former doctor's receptionist began the process of declaring him dead, and conning insurers and pension funds out of the £250,000.

He came home after repeatedly phoning her in tears, and lived in secret in a room in the bedsit the couple owned next door to the family home.

Under the assumed identity John Jones, taken from a local child who died in infancy, Mr Darwin continued to run the couple's affairs and travelled around the world planning a new life for the pair.

In October last year Mrs Darwin settled her affairs in the UK, having sold off the family's property portfolio, and emigrated to Panama, where she joined her husband.

Cash was transferred via the Channel Islands, and the houses which the couple were in danger of losing as they crept close to bankruptcy in 2002 were turned into assets worth £500,000.

They bought a flat and land in the Panama countryside which they hoped to transform into a canoeing centre focusing on eco-tourism.

But then Darwin flew back to the UK and handed himself into a central London police station, claiming he suffered amnesia and could remember nothing since 2000.

He was reunited with his sons in December. They told the court they could not believe he was alive.

Mrs Darwin, still in Panama, was tracked down by a journalist, and pretended to be shocked at the back-from-the-dead miracle.

But her story collapsed when a photograph was found on the internet showing the smiling couple posing in a Panama estate agents in 2006.

Anthony Darwin, 29, said he felt "betrayed" when he realised the snap was genuine.

His older brother told the court he was angry at his mother's deception, saying: "I couldn't believe the fact she knew he was alive all this time and I had been lied to for God knows how long."

The couple were charged with fraud and money laundering, and Mr Darwin faced a separate charge relating to his fake passport in the name John Jones.

Andrew Robertson QC, prosecuting, said the plan might not have been Mrs Darwin's but "it was a scheme in which Anne Darwin not only played an equal and vital role but it was a role which she played with superb aplomb".

At first Mrs Darwin told police she only discovered her husband was alive a year after he went missing.

But she later changed her story when she was shown a library card which Darwin took out in the name of Jones only weeks after he supposedly drowned.

The revelation forced her to admit she knew about the plot months in advance.

She denied the charges, saying she went along with the deception because she was scared her husband would leave her.

But the "marital coercion" defence required Darwin to be present with her each time an offence was committed and for her to be forced to break the law.

Her claims of an unhappy 35-year marriage to a bullying partner were also undermined when the jury was shown loving and sometimes flirtatious emails the two sent each other.

Before his wife's trial Darwin had admitted seven counts of fraud and one of dishonestly obtaining a passport. He denied nine counts of money laundering, which will remain on file.

The Darwin story has not ended today in court, Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood said.

"I don't think we have really got to the bottom of everything here today," he said.

"I'm sure there will be more stories that come to light but she has clearly been brought to task for the offences she committed."

The now famous photograph of the grinning couple prompted police to arrest Mr Darwin, the detective said.

He feared Mr Darwin might flee back to Panama if he saw the damning picture.

He said: "I suppose it would have been difficult to get Mr Darwin back."

He said the couple's sons were treated in a "disgraceful" way.

When he started his investigation he feared the sons must have known about their parents' plan.

"But the more we investigated it, the more we realised they did not know, they had gone through a particularly horrendous sequence of events.

"For her to say 'I had to go along with it because John told me', I just don't know how any mother could do that."

Mr Greenwood said it was not a "victimless crime".

"You just had to stand in court and listen to the evidence of her sons or her friend, Irene Blakemore, to see that."

He added: "She was out and out despicable and I don't have the time of day for her."