Celebrity Designer Jailed for Smuggling Python Handbags
A luxury handbag designer was sentenced to 18 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to illegally importing merchandise that had been made using the pelts of protected wildlife.
Nancy Gonzalez, the 71-year-old founder of Gzuniga, was arrested in Cali, Colombia, in 2022 and later extradited to the U.S. Gonzalez and others had been charged with one count of conspiracy and two counts of smuggling for “illegally importing designer handbags made from caiman and python skin from February 2016 to April 2019,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
The DOJ previously said the average retail price for the bags was more than $2,000, alleging that Gonzalez and others would ask friends, relatives, and employees of her manufacturing business in her native Colombia to smuggle the bags into the U.S. by carrying them “on their person or in their luggage while traveling on passenger airlines.”