Fashion designer Nancy Gonzalez has been sentenced to eighteen months in prison for smuggling crocodile skin handbags from her native Columbia, into America. The 71 year old designer, whose handbags are popular with celebrities and TV stylists and were at one time stocked in Harrods and Saks, pled guilty in a Miami federal court to the smuggling charges.

Gonzalez recruited a team of couriers to carry handbags on commercial flights. They were instructed to tell customs officials that the bags were gifts for relatives, if stopped and questioned. Each bag sold for approximately $2000 dollars and prosecutors argued that the goods smuggled, earned her as much as $2,000,000 dollars

Although the trade in caimans and pythons is not banned, it is strictly regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which both the US and Columbia are signatories to. Gonzalez failed to secure the necessary import permits required by regulators.

“This investigation uncovered a multi-year scheme that involved paid couriers smuggling undeclared handbags made of CITES-protected reptile skins into the US,” said Edward Grace of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

At her sentencing, Gonzalez apologized to the United States and claimed that “under pressure, I made poor decisions.”

In addition to the eighteen month sentence, the company, Gzuniga, which Gonzalez sold her products through, was ordered to forfeit all handbags and other previously seized product, and banned for three years from any activities involving commercial trade in wildlife. John Camilo Aguilar Jaramillo, her co-conspirator in the operation, pleaded guilty on April 8 and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 27.