A Co Down pensioner who has already admitted possessing and selling hundreds of fake designer handbags has admitted converting more than £80,000 of criminal property.
Standing in the dock of Newry Crown Court on Wednesday, 66-year-old Roseleen Ann D’Arcy entered a guilty plea to converting £86,820 cash of criminal property between 21 January 2018 and 24 July last year.
At her initial arraignment last September D’Arcy had entered guilty pleas to 11 charges of having items in breach of registered trademarks “with a view to make a gain for yourself or another or with intent to cause loss to another and without the consent of the proprietor” and one of selling handbags “which bore a sign identical to, or likely to be mistaken for, a registered trade mark,” all committed at her home on Windsor bank in Newry on 1 September last year.
Following her further admission on Wednesday, prosecuting counsel Malcolm Irvine asked for a final charge of transferring criminal property, namely bank credits, to be “left on the books.”
A previous court heard that there were various fashion houses named in the trademark offences including Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Givinchy, Prada, Balenciaga and Christian Dior.
According to a police statement from Organised Crime Unit Detectives, when they searched Darcey’s home nearly 500 items of suspected counterfeit designer goods and a BMW car were seized.
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 1 January 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 on Wednesday Judge Gordon Kerr KC adjourned the case for a pre-sentence probation report and ordered D’Arcy to come back in January to be sentenced.