The back-from-the-dead canoeist, 57, and his wife, 56, hatched their audacious plot to beat bankruptcy after running into financial difficulties.

Their "determined, sustained and sophisticated" fraud ended yesterday at Teesside Crown Court as Mr Darwin was jailed for six years and three months and his wife for six and a half years.

The Darwins claimed £250,820.75 in insurance payments and pension payouts over a five-and-half-year period.

The money was used to keep the couple afloat and allow them to pay off the hefty mortgage on their marital home and portfolio of rental properties.

When the houses were sold off, the couple laundered the proceeds – even using their own sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29 – via Jersey to Panama, where the couple had started a new life.

Police believe that when the Darwins were arrested last December, their assets were worth £500,000. After Mr Darwin walked into a London police station, officers began unravelling their complicated finances in Panama.

Mrs Darwin had bought an apartment in Panama City worth £28,000 and spent £198,000 on land to build a canoeing centre for tourists.

Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood, who led the inquiry into the couple, said: "Any reasonable person who finds themselves in the Darwins' position would sell their properties to realise the debt.

"Instead, they hatched this plot. Mr and Mrs Darwin liked to portray themselves as well to do, and it was an image that they found difficult to move away from."

He said police were already starting the process of getting the money back, and a worldwide order is in place freezing the couple's assets.

"We will pursue them through the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act. All of the life they have built in Panama has been on the back of criminal activity," he said.

Insurance firms Unat Direct and Norwich Union have also started legal proceedings against the couple over the sums they defrauded.