Moron of the week

[TooFunny]

British couple jailed for fraud after 'dead' canoeist husband returns home

LONDON - A British judge sentenced both a husband and wife to more than six years in jail Wednesday for faking the man's drowning death in a US$500,000 insurance scam.


Anne Darwin, 56, was jailed for six and a half years after a jury found her guilty earlier Wednesday of six counts of fraud and nine counts of money laundering. Her husband John Darwin, 57, received six years and three months - a slightly shorter sentence because he had pleaded guilty.
The couple staged John Darwin's death in an apparent canoe accident in 2002 to collect pension and insurance payments.


Prosecutors said the couple kept the fact that he was alive secret from their two adult sons while they planned to start a new life together in Panama. Sons Mark, 32 and Anthony, 29, testified at the trial that they had no idea their father was still alive. Mark Darwin said news of his father's disappearance had "crushed my world."


The plot began to unravel in December when the missing man walked into a London police station claiming to have amnesia. Soon after, a newspaper published a photograph of the smiling couple together in Panama, four years after his alleged death.


Prosecutors said that for some of the time he was missing, John Darwin lived in a secret room in an apartment next door to the family home in Seaton Carew, about 260 miles north of London.


Anne Darwin acknowledged that she had helped her husband stage his death to collect pension and insurance payments. But she insisted she had been coerced. Her defence of marital coercion was undermined when the court was shown affectionate, flirtatious e-mails she exchanged with her "dead" husband.


The jury deliberated for four hours before finding Anne Darwin, a former doctor's receptionist, guilty on all 15 counts against her.