Canoe fraud wife Anne Darwin to repay £600,000

LONDON (Reuters) - Lawyers for Anne Darwin said on Wednesday she had agreed to repay more than half-a-million pounds from a fraud carried out with her back-from the dead canoeist husband.

Lawyers told Leeds Crown Court she would repay 591,838 pounds, while her husband John would repay a nominal sum of 1 pound because he has no financial assets, the Press Association reported.

The pair were jailed in 2008 for an elaborate insurance scam which saw them fake his death in a canoeing accident at sea in 2002, deceiving emergency services, police, a coroner and even their own sons.

They fled to Panama to set up a new life, but he turned up at a UK police station in November 2007, claiming he was a missing person with amnesia.

The repayment offer was made during a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing and will include compensation to their victims.

In March, the couple, from Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, both failed in appeals against their sentences.

Anne Darwin, 57, had been found guilty of 15 counts of fraud and money laundering and was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison.

Her 58-year-old husband had been jailed for six years and three months after admitting seven charges of deception.

(Reporting by Avril Ormsby; Editing by Steve Addison)