Posted on July 24, 2008 - by Jordan H
Big Mother is watching you!
It’s been quite a while ago since the story of the Darwins began to unfold. If you’ve missed it all, then here’s a quick runthrough: John Darwen faked his death in a canoe accident in 2002, and then mysteriously walked into a police station in 2007 saying “I think i’m a missing person”.
Well, the police were half-convinced of this story, but when an anonymous single-mother typed in the words “John”, “Anne” and “Panama” into Google Images, the woman found this picture on the MoveToPanama website, showing John and Anne, and dated on the picture as 14th July 2006. (The picture was removed from the “Customers” page of the site, but somebody forgot to delete the file…)
In a further blow to their story, Sky News published a spreadsheet which they claimed to have got from the Darwins computers, detailing every part of the Darwins’ big plans. How they did this I don’t know, but I suspect hacking was involved!
The Darwins have been sentenced to over 6 years each for their scams. It also appears that they may have stashed more than £1m in many different accounts overseas.
It just goes to show that nobody can just ‘disappear’ nowadays, without leaving some digital trail that prying eyes can collaboratively piece together. It’s common sense not to publish a photo of yourself (dated!) on the internet if you are a missing person.