IN THE BAG | 

Pensioner caught with hundreds of fake designer handbags admits €98k crime cash charge

Co Down woman Anne Rosaleen Darcy (67) entered a guilty plea to converting £86,820 (€98k) cash of criminal property

Yesterday at 19:08

A jet-setting Co Down woman who has already admitted possessing and selling hundreds of fake designer handbags today admitted converting more than £86,000 (€98k) of criminal property.

Standing in the dock of Newry Crown Court again, 67-year-old Anne Rosaleen Darcy entered a guilty plea to converting £86,820 cash of criminal property between January 21, 2018 and July 24, last year.

At her initial arraignment last September, Darcy admitted 11 charges of having items in breach of registered trademarks with a view to make a gain for herself and one of selling handbags “which bore a sign identical to, or likely to be mistaken for, a registered trade mark”.

All the offences were committed at her home at Windsor Bank in Newry on September 1, last year.

Following her further admission today, prosecuting counsel Malcolm Irvine asked for a final charge of transferring criminal property, namely bank credits, to be “left on the books.”

Fashion houses named in the trademark offences included Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada, Balenciaga and Christian Dior.

According to a police statement, when detectives from the Organised Crime Unit searched her home they seized nearly 500 items of suspected counterfeit designer goods and a BMW car.

None of the alleged facts of the case were open today but previous courts heard claims that during the raid police seized 245 fake designer handbags and with the 66-year-old admitting she makes £200-250 on each bag, the minimum profit would be £49,000 on that seizure alone.

During an earlier bail variation application, a detective outlined that in addition to a room filled with counterfeit “handbags, belts, shoes and purses,” officers also uncovered £80,000 of diamonds “wrapped in paper” as well as a “diamond grading report” from a business in Dubai dated January 1, 2011.

When Darcy was questioned, she made “full admissions” that she had been travelling back and forth to Dubai and also that the items in her house were all fake.

In court today, Judge Gordon Kerr KC adjourned the case for a pre-sentence probation report and ordered Darcy to come back in January to be sentenced.