NEARLY £500,000-worth of assets owned by insurance fraudster Anne Darwin have still not been seized, three years after the scam came to light.

Land on the Panama Canal worth more than £230,000, a Panama City apartment worth £62,000 and HSBC accounts totalling more than £140,000 in the country belonging to Mrs Darwin have been identified but have not yet been confiscated.

Mrs Darwin, who is expected to be released from prison in the next few weeks, became notorious after her husband, John, faked his own death by disappearing while canoeing off the Hartlepool coast in 2002, allowing her to claim £250,000 in life insurance and pensions.

The couple tricked their sons into believing their father had drowned, when he had fled to Panama with his wife and was living off his life insurance money.

Last night, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told The Northern Echo it had managed to recover just £157,720 of Mrs Darwin’s assets from bank accounts in Britain and Jersey, three years after the conspiracy was uncovered.

More than £400,000- worth of assets in Panama, where the Darwins set up a new life, are still owned by Mrs Darwin.

Teesside Crown Court appointed the company Grant Thornton as enforcement receiver to recover the Panamanian assets.

The CPS spokesman said, so far, assets had been identified and were “subject to confiscation”

but had still not been seized, including:

* An apartment valued at £62,702 in Panama City;

* Land at Gatun Lake (part of the Panama Canal), valued at £232,335.93;

* Three accounts in the HSBC in Panama containing £292.13, £132,633 and £11,027.31.

The spokesman said: “The CPS, through the enforcement receiver, is still actively pursuing these assets so that Mrs Darwin does not benefit from her criminal behaviour.”

He said a Toyota Land Cruiser, worth about £25,000 and registered in Mrs Darwin’s name, had gone missing in Panama and appealed for anyone with information on its location to contact police.

Mr Darwin was released from Moorland open prison, in Doncaster, earlier this month after serving half his six-year sentence.

He turned up at a police station three years ago claiming to be suffering from amnesia.