Celebrity designer faces jail for smuggling crocodile handbags

A fashion icon who designs accessories for celebrities and characters from the Sex and the City TV series faces 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to smuggling crocodile handbags from Colombia into the United States.

Nancy Gonzalez was sentenced Monday in federal court in Miami. Gonzalez was arrested in Cali, Colombia in 2022. He was then extradited to the United States on charges of violating the U.S. Wildlife Act.

Prosecutors said she hired couriers to carry expensive handbags on commercial flights, smuggling nearly $2 million worth of goods into the U.S.

The designer bags were made from captive-bred caiman and python skin, but Gonzalez never received the import approval he needed from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts Fitzgerald compared Gonzalez’s behavior to that of a drug dealer, saying he was motivated by money.

Gonzalez’s attorneys pleaded for leniency, writing in a memo that the single parent is determined to become financially independent.

The judge who sentenced Gonzalez called his behavior particularly “heinous” because U.S. officials warned him in 2016 and 2017 not to violate agency rules.

“I apologize to the United States from the bottom of my heart. It was not my intention to hurt a country for which I am so grateful,” Gonzalez told the court, holding back tears. “Under pressure, I made bad decisions.”