Nancy Gonzalez, the founder of luxury handbag company Gzuniga Ltd., has been sent to jail over her purses.
The Colombian designer, whose upscale handbags have been seen on Sex and the City and carried by celebrities like Victoria Beckham, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday, The Washington Post reported. She received that sentence for illegally importing purses made from the skin of crocodiles and snakes protected by international treaties.
“The press of business, production deadlines, or other economic factors are not justification for anyone to knowingly flout the system and attempt to write their own exceptions to wildlife trafficking laws,” Markenzy Lapointe, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida, said in a statement.
From February 2016 to April 2019, Gonzalez enlisted friends, family, and employees to fly handbags made with caiman or python skin from Colombia to the United States, prosecutors said. Those species are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty that both the U.S. and Colombia have signed. Gonzalez apparently received warnings about the smuggling in 2016 and 2017 but continued to import the bags to America, where they were displayed in her New York showroom and sold to high-end clients, the Post noted.
Back in July 2022, Gonzalez was arrested in Colombia, where she served more than a year in prison. After being extradited to the U.S., she pleaded guilty in November to one count of conspiracy and two counts of smuggling, the Post said. Her 18-month sentence is less than what prosecutors had initially wanted, and it will be followed by three years of supervised release.
Sam Rabin, one of Gonzalez’s lawyers, told the newspaper in an email that the designer doesn’t plan to appeal her sentence. But he continued to defend his client, writing, “While most major purse designers rush samples to fashion shows, sometimes without the proper paperwork, only she was chosen to be prosecuted by the department of justice … Her case should had [sic] been handled administratively instead of by arrest and prosecution.”
And in court on Monday, Gonzalez seemed remorseful, according to the Associated Press. “From the bottom of my heart, I apologize to the United States of America. I never intended to offend a country to which I owe immense gratitude,” she said. “Under pressure, I made poor decisions.”
Authors
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Tori Latham
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