'Dead' Briton charged with fraud

2007-12-08 22:36

London - "Back-from-the-dead" Briton John Darwin was charged with fraud on Saturday, police said, a week after he resurfaced claiming amnesia after vanishing five years ago.

Cleveland Police in Kirkleatham, north-east England, where the 57-year-old has been questioned, made the decision hours before a deadline for them to either charge or release the man whose case has sparked worldwide interest.

Meanwhile his wife Anne Darwin, 55, said she went along with his faked death to escape huge debts, and lived with him in secret for years, in a confession carried in two British newspapers.

Prosecutors authorised detectives to charge John Darwin with "offences of obtaining a money transfer by deception and making an untrue statement... to procure a passport", Cleveland Police Detective Sergeant Iain Henderson told reporters.

Darwin was "fit and well" in custody and police would apply to court to continue to hold him, he said.

Police seeking wife

Henderson appealed for Anne Darwin to get in touch "at the earliest opportunity.

"Cleveland Police will be making enquiries to trace her and speak to her regarding the investigation," he said.

She is believed to be in Miami en route home from Panama, where she confessed she had been living for the past few months with her husband.

She said the couple got caught up in a tangle of lies which finally unravelled last week when he walked into a London police station.

"For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing, presumed dead, he was actually at home with me," Anne Darwin said in the interview published in the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror tabloids.

"I know it seems too incredible to be true, but it is," she added.

- AFP