A luxury handbag designer to the stars has been jailed after smuggling purses made from the skins of protected reptiles.
Nancy Gonzalez, 71, who has made handbags carried by Victoria Beckham, Britney Spears and members of the Sex and the City cast, pleaded guilty to illegally importing bags made from caimans and pythons into the US from her native Colombia.
From February 2016 to April 2019, officials say Gonzalez recruited friends, family and employees to transport the bags worth as much as $2 million on passenger airlines, before then sending them to her showroom in New York. They were said to have been exhibited at high-profile fashion events and sold at luxury stores.
Gonzalez, who was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and later extradited to the US, was sentenced to 18 months in a federal court in Miami for breaking US wildlife laws.
Both Colombia and the US are signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which protects the reptiles,
The trade in the reptiles is not banned, but is strictly regulated under CITES rules. Gonzalez didn’t secure the import permits required by regulators.
Edward Grace, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said: “This investigation uncovered a multi-year scheme that involved paid couriers smuggling undeclared handbags made of CITES-protected reptile skins into the US to be sold for thousands of dollars.
“The service will continue to seek justice for protected species exploited for profit, and we will hold accountable those who seek to circumvent international controls meant to regulate their sustainable trade,” he added.
Lawyers for Gonzalez sought leniency for the celebrity designer, describing her journey as a divorced single mother of two children who designed belts on a home sewing machine in Cali for friends into a fashion icon who outcompeted the likes of Dior, Prada and Gucci.
The attorneys said the designer had already paid dearly for her crimes. The Colombian company she built, which once employed 300 mostly female employees, declared bankruptcy and stopped operating after her arrest. “From the bottom of my heart, I apologise to the United States of America,” Gonzalez told the court.
