Luxury Handbag Seller, Founder, Associate Get Prison Time for Smuggling Snake Skin Handbags

Gzuniga Ltd., a luxury handbag seller, its founder Nancy Teresa Gonzalez de Barberi and Gonzalez's associate, Mauricio Giraldo, were sentenced to prison for illegally importing to the U.S. goods made from protected wildlife from Colombia, DOJ announced April 22.

Gonzalez got 18 months in prison with a three-year supervised release term, while Giraldo received time served, which was around 22 months based on "incarceration in Colombia and the United States since his extradition," with one year of supervised release. The company was sentenced to three years' probation, ordered to "forfeit all handbags and other previously seized product" and barred from any commercial trade in wildlife for three years.

Gzuniga, Gonzalez and Giraldo were all charged with conspiring to illegally import designer handbags made from caiman and python skin from February 2016 to April 2019. The import scheme saw the guilty parties enlist "friends, relatives and even employees of Gonzalez’s manufacturing company in Colombia to wear the designer handbags or put them in their luggage while traveling on passenger airlines." After arriving in the U.S., the bags were sold in Gzuniga's New York showroom.

The caiman and python species are covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, making their import illegal.