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When she was arrested in December 2022, she initially claimed that the items were costume jewelery and other goods made from cow bone, and that she had not been selling them for a profit.
However, in May 2024, he pleaded guilty to selling ivory in 2022 in breach of the Ivory Act, which came into effect the same year.
It is understood to be the first conviction in Scotland under the Ivory Act, which brought about an almost total ban on the import, export and sale of items containing elephant ivory.
She also admitted fraudulently evading export duties by failing to obtain export licenses for goods being shipped overseas.
At Dundee Sheriff Court on Monday, Sheriff George Way acknowledged that this was Bell’s first offense and that she appeared “genuinely remorseful” for her actions.
She also said that she “did not fully realize the implications of the ivory trade. It has many other implications but that may not always be apparent when dealing piecemeal”.
He added: “At the end of the day, the trade in these items is generated by money. If they weren’t valuable to some people, then there wouldn’t be the illegal trade, and there wouldn’t be the poaching and the horrible things we know about.”
He ordered Bell, who is from Dundee, to pay a fine of £1,400 plus tax and a victim surcharge of £75.
Bell, dressed in a white blouse, showed no reaction as the sentence was handed down.
At the previous hearing in May, prosecutor Karon Rollo explained that Bell first came to the attention of the authorities in March 2022 when Border Force staff at Heathrow Airport became suspicious that packages he was sending to China includes elephant ivory.
She was arrested in December 2022 following an investigation by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which found she had used multiple eBay accounts to sell the items.
Ms Rollo told the court that Bell had photographed them with a set of scales when advertising the items, which would have told collectors that the items were ivory rather than cow bone, as ivory is much heavier.
He also said following her arrest, Bell admitted to receiving letters from customs informing her that she needed export licenses for the packages she was sending abroad, but that she had ignored them.
It was also found that the prices she was recording on the packages she was sending were much lower than what the goods had actually been sold for.
Bell was fined £1,400 after pleading guilty to offenses under the Customs and Excise Control Act 1979 and the Ivory Act 2018.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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