'Canoe Man' and wife jailed for fraud

(CNN) -- A husband and wife who faked the man's drowning death in a $500,000 fraud have each been sentenced to more than six years in jail, according to reports.

A judge at Teesside Crown Court sentenced 56-year-old Anne Darwin to six and a half years Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. She was found guilty earlier in the day of six counts of fraud and nine counts of money laundering.

Her 57-year-old husband John, who had pleaded guilty, received six years and three months.

Anne Darwin had claimed her husband had forced her to go through with the plan in order to con insurance and pension companies by faking his death at sea in a canoeing accident.

However, the jury rejected her defense and she was convicted on each of the 15 counts at the end of a seven day trial.

Her husband John, a former prison officer and teacher, shocked police when he appeared at a police station in central London in late 2007 -- five years after he was thought to have drowned off the coast of north-east England.

A coroner declared John Darwin dead in 2003, 13 months after his disappearance. Watch more on the case »

According to the British Press Association, prosecuting lawyer Andrew Robertson said that the couple conspired to commit the fraud through "shame and embarrassment" at possible bankruptcy over mortgage repayments on a dozen properties.

The court heard how Anne Darwin put forward an initial defense of "marital coercion," claiming her husband forced her to go along with his plan.

However Robertson told the jury that when Darwin walked into a police station last December, claiming to be suffering from amnesia, his wife was living in Panama with assets of almost $1million, PA reported.

Anne Darwin showed no reaction as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts after four hours of deliberation, according to PA. Her sons -- Mark and Anthony -- sat in the public gallery as the verdicts were read out in a silent courtroom. Neither of the sons reacted to the guilty verdicts.