Wildlife Trade and Poaching

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    Handbag Designer Nancy Gonzalez Sentenced to 18 Months for Smuggling Exotic Skins

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    Nancy Gonzalez, whose clients included Britney Spears and Sofia Vergara, smuggled purses from her native Colombia to the United States using couriers. She will serve 18 months.The handbag designer Nancy Gonzalez built a cult following among celebrities and the South American superrich thanks to her use of brilliantly dyed precious skins. Once one of the largest purveyors of crocodile skin accessories in the world, her namesake brand sold totes and clutches in lime green alligator and lavender python skin for thousands of dollars, often through big-name retailers like Saks and Bergdorf Goodman.Now Ms. Gonzalez, 71, is facing considerable time in bright orange coveralls.On Monday, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in a Miami federal court to charges of smuggling hundreds of handbags made from the skins of protected wildlife into the United States from her native Colombia.Ms. Gonzalez, whose full name is Nancy Tereza Gonzalez de Barberi and whose business was incorporated into a luxury handbag company called Gzuniga Limited, was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and then extradited to the United States last August. She admitted to recruiting as many as 40 couriers to carry up to four products at a time on commercial flights to be used at New York Fashion Week and industry events or to be sold in the Gzuniga showroom between February 2016 and April 2019.Prosecutors said that the handbags and purses, made from the hides of caiman alligators and pythons bred in captivity, were worth as much as $2 million. The designer’s lawyers said that the pieces were mostly samples and cost about $140 each, with only about 1 percent lacking the proper authorization to be brought into the United States.The trade in caimans and pythons is not banned but is strictly regulated under the rules of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which both the United States and Colombia are signatories. According to prosecutors, Ms. Gonzalez never secured the necessary import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service required by regulators.“It’s all driven by the money,” Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald of the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, said on Monday. “If you want to deter the conduct, you want the cocaine kingpin not the person in the field.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Pleads Guilty in ‘Killing Spree’ of Bald Eagles in Montana

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      Travis John Branson of Washington State was indicted last year for illegally hunting and selling the birds. A co-defendant is still on the run.One of two men accused of shooting 3,600 birds in Montana, including bald and golden eagles, in an illegal “killing spree” pleaded guilty to taking part in a scheme to sell the dead birds on the black market, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.In a plea deal, Travis John Branson, 48, of Washington State, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, two counts of illegally trafficking bald and golden eagles, and one count of violating the Lacey Act, a federal law prohibiting the sale of illegally acquired wildlife, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana said.Mr. Branson faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy and Lacey Act charges, prosecutors said.In December, a grand jury indicted Mr. Branson and his co-defendant Simon Paul, 42, of Montana, on 15 counts, most of them for illegal trafficking of eagles. Prosecutors agreed to drop 11 of those counts for Mr. Branson, according to the plea agreement.Mr. Paul, who did not appear at his arraignment, prosecutors said, is still on the run. His sentencing is set for July 31 at the U.S. District Court in Montana, prosecutors said.From January 2015 to March 2021, the two men routinely met on the prairies of the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana to hunt eagles that they would later sell, prosecutors said. Mr. Branson would travel from Washington State to meet Mr. Paul on the reservation, where he lived, prosecutors said.The men sold the eagles’ wings, tails and, on one occasion, a whole eagle, according to the indictment. Prosecutors did not say how much money the men made from sales, noting only that the bird parts were sold for “significant sums of cash.”At one point they devised a hunting strategy in which they set out a deer carcass to lure in the birds, according to the indictment, which also quoted text messages between Mr. Branson and buyers.In one message, Mr. Branson told a buyer that he was “on a killing spree” to stock up on eagle tail feathers. In another, he wrote that he was out “committing felonies,” according to the indictment.He also seemed to acknowledge in a separate message that shipping the birds internationally was illegal, prosecutors said.Mr. Branson’s public defender, Andrew J. Nelson, could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday evening. Messages left at a phone number and sent to an email address listed for Mr. Branson were immediately returned.A lawyer listed in court records for Mr. Paul declined to comment.The killing of bald eagles was seen as particularly flagrant in a country where the bird is the national symbol and was once considered an endangered species.It was unclear how many of the 3,600 birds prosecutors said the men killed were eagles. Clair J. Howard, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office, declined to comment. More

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      More Than 100 Animals Seized From Long Island Home

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      Animal welfare authorities say the animals were being illegally held and included a South American ostrich, a giant African snail, two prairie dogs and an endangered tiger salamander.Animal welfare authorities seized more than 100 animals from a Long Island home this week — including a South American ostrich, a giant African snail, two prairie dogs and an endangered tiger salamander — after a tip they received about exotic animals led them to their owner’s doorstep.“He was running a pop-up circus,” said Detective Matt Roper, director of law enforcement for the Nassau County SPCA. “Bringing these animals out in public and letting children play with these animals.”Detective Roper said the animals’ owner was given court summonses for several state and local violations, including endangering the public and housing and possessing endangered species. Federal authorities are also investigating, he said.Detective Roper emphasized that there were no signs that the animals had been abused or neglected.“They were all cared for,” Detective Roper said. “They were just in violation of being held or kept as either pets or for exhibition purposes.”Detective Roper, who declined to name the animals’ owner because the investigation is continuing, said that on Tuesday the authorities took 104 animals from the basement and backyard of the house, which is in North Bellmore.Humane Long Island, an animal advocacy organization that took custody of dozens of the animals that were seized, identified their owner as Matthew Spohrer, 32. He was issued 30 violations relating to illegal possession of animals, the group said in a news release.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More