LONDON (AFP) - The wife of a man who faked his own death in a canoeing accident was found guilty Wednesday of obtaining money by deception and money-laundering.

Anne Darwin, 56, was convicted after husband John was declared dead when he apparently went missing while canoeing in the North Sea near the couple's home in Seaton Carew, northeast England, in 2002.

Prosecutors said she helped him disappear to escape mounting property debts and illegally claim life insurance to the tune of 250,000 pounds. She claimed he coerced her into doing it.

Jurors at Teesside Crown Court in north-east England rejected her defence and convicted her of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering after a seven-day trial. She showed no emotion as the verdict was delivered.

The court heard how she had tricked friends and family including sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, for over five years into believing her husband was dead.

Mark Darwin told the court during the trial: "I couldn't believe the fact that she knew he was alive all this time and I had been lied to for God knows how long."

He also spoke of how his mother had wept as she told him of his father's disappearance.

"She flung her arms around me, she said: 'He's gone, I think. I have lost him,'" he said. "She wouldn't stop crying for ages."

Anne and John Darwin eventually set up a new life together in Panama and the scam was rumbled after Darwin flew home and handed himself in to a British police station last year, claiming amnesia.

The couple were due to be sentenced together later Wednesday.

John Darwin pleaded guilty in March to seven charges of deception and one charge of making false statements to procure a passport.

The plot involved John Darwin paddling out to sea near the couple's home in his canoe in March 2002 and abandoning it further up the coast.

His wife later picked him up from the beach, helped him to flee inland and told emergency services he was lost at sea.

After some time living away, John Darwin moved back to the family home and lived in secret in a bedsit, posing as a handyman if visitors called and listening to his wife's telephone conversations with their sons on speakerphone.

He secured a false passport and moved to Panama, where he was joined by his wife in October last year. They had bought a flat and land there which they hoped to transform into a canoeing centre.

After John Darwin handed himself into police in Britain, Anne Darwin remained in Panama, where she was tracked down by a British journalist and pretended to be shocked by her husband's "reappearance".

But her story was revealed to be a lie when a photograph surfaced showing the couple posing at a Panama estate agents in 2006.

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