For smuggling bags made from skins of protected wildlife to the US via couriers she recruited, the Columbian designer of expensive handbags is sentenced to 18 months in jail

After over a year since her arrest in Cali, Columbia, where she was then extradition to the US, Nancy Teresa Gonzalez de Barberi was sentenced to 18 months in an American penitentiary. In a Miami federal court last year, Ms Gonzalez “pleaded guilty to smuggling”, according to local news reports. These were luxury bags made of the hides of caiman (a cousin of the crocodile) and pythons, and their importation broke US wildlife laws. The Associated Press also shared that she told the court before sentencing: “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.” Reportedly holding back tears, the 71-year-old added, “Under pressure, I made poor decisions.”

What pressure she was under, she did not say. Some of those decisions included “recruiting” couriers—mostly family members, friends, and staff—to bring bags made of skins not permitted to enter the US without a license across the border on commercial flights between February 2016 to April 2019, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Her co-defendants and former employees testified that there were a staggering 40 passengers to carry four designer handbags each, per trip. These handbag mules were instructed to tell custom officers when questioned that what they had were gifts for relatives. After that, the bags made their way to the brand’s New York office and thereafter to trade fairs or events during New York Fashion Week.

Although the crimes were committed while Ms Gonzalez was a wealthy and established business woman, her lawyers, seeking lenient punishment, stated that, at the start, she was “a divorced single mother of two children who designed belts on a home sewing machine in Cali”, as The Guardian reported. But, at the time of her wrongdoings, her children were already grown-ups. It is not clear why her humble beginnings had anything to do with the decisions she made when she was a “celebrity designer” whose expensive bags were sought after by Hollywood stars and society women, such as Britney Spears, Eva Longoria, Salma Hayek, and Vanessa Hudgens.

According to her lawyers, the company that the defendant founded in the 1990s has been closed. She is now reportedly declared bankrupt after shuttering her business, following the indictment. Her organisation had employed as many as 300 staffers, mostly women—many may now be wondering if their former boss led by example. According to the US Department of Justice, Nancy Gonzalez handbags “typically retail for over $2,000 each (or about S$2,722)”. It isn’t clear why Ms Gonzalez chose to avoid paying for the licences that would allow those bags to be sold in the States. Perhaps, as Assistant US Attorney Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald said, “It’s all driven by the money.”

Photo: nancygonzalez/Facebook