Back from the dead canoeist John Darwin has launched a bid to appeal against his sentence, his solicitor said today.
The 58-year-old was jailed in July at Teesside Crown Court for six years and three months after admitting faking his own death in a canoeing accident to allow his wife Anne make fraudulent insurance and pension claims.
His solicitor, John Nixon, said he had made an application to the Court of Appeal for the right to challenge the sentence.
John and Anne Darwin carried out a "determined, sustained and sophisticated" £250,000 fraud, Mr Justice Wilkie said when he sentenced them.
They tricked the police, a coroner, financial institutions and even their sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29.
The judge said the sons' lives were "crushed" by the deception, and that meant a severe sentence was necessary.
Mrs Darwin has already launched an appeal bid against both her conviction and the six-year, six-month sentence she received for her part in the elaborate plot.
The former doctors' receptionist claimed during her trial she was forced to break the law by her "domineering" partner, but that story was rejected unanimously by the jury which found her guilty of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering.
Darwin faked his death in 2002 in the sea close to the couple's home in Seaton Carew near Hartlepool and lived in secret in the bedsit they owned next door.
The couple fled to Panama once Mrs Darwin had straightened out their finances when the fraudulently claimed insurance money came through.
She also cashed in the couple's 12-home property portfolio and had set about making a new life in Central America when Mr Darwin suddenly handed himself in at a London police station in November last year.
PA