MIAMI– A leading fashion designer whose accessories were used by celebrities including Britney Spears and the cast of the TV series “Sex and the City” was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in Miami federal court to charges of smuggling crocodile handbags from her native Colombia.
Nancy Gonzalez was arrested in Cali, Colombia, in 2022 and later extradited to the US for running an elaborate multi-year conspiracy that recruited couriers to transport her luxury handbags on commercial flights to luxury showrooms and fashion events in New York – all in violation of US natural laws.
“It’s all driven by the money,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald, who compared Gonzalez’s behavior to that of drug traffickers. “If you want to discourage the behavior, you want the cocaine kingpin, not the person in the field.”
Lawyers for Gonzalez have asked for leniency for the famed designer, detailing her journey as a divorced single mother of two in Cali who designed belts for friends on a home sewing machine to a fashion icon rivaling the likes of Dior, Prada and Gucci.
They showed the court a 2019 video in which top buyers from Bergdorf Goodman, Saks and other retailers praised her creativity and productivity.
“She was determined to show her children and the world that women, including minority women like herself, can successfully pursue their dreams and become financially independent,” they wrote in a memo ahead of Monday’s hearing. “Against all odds, this small but mighty woman managed to create the very first luxury, high-end fashion company from a third world country.”
However, the government countered that she had acquired great wealth and a lavish lifestyle, which contrasted with the couriers she recruited to smuggle her merchandise into the United States. According to testimony from her co-defendants and former employees, Gonzalez, described as a micromanager, would recruit as many as 40 passengers each to carry four designer handbags on commercial flights before major fashion events. In this way, prosecutors estimate she smuggled goods worth as much as $2 million into the US
All the skins came from caimans and pythons bred in captivity. Nevertheless, on some occasions she failed to obtain proper import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was required under a widely ratified international treaty regulating the trade in endangered species.
In 2016 and 2017, she was warned by U.S. officials not to circumvent such rules, making her behavior particularly “egregious,” Judge Robert Scola said in handing down his sentence.
Although trade in the skins used by Gonzalez was not banned, they came from protected wildlife that requires close monitoring under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known by the initials CITES.
Speaking to the court before the sentencing, Gonzalez said she deeply regretted her failure to scrupulously follow U.S. laws and that her only wish was to hug her 103-year-old mother one more time.
“From the bottom of my heart, I apologize to the United States of America. It was never my intention to offend a country to which I owe immense gratitude,” she said, holding back tears. “I made bad decisions under pressure.”