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A puppy trader nicknamed Cruella De Vil has been convicted again – for smuggling seven pups from Ireland into the UK in a large holdall.

Jaimie Colquhoun was spotted by border guards as the dogs squirmed around in the bag at a ferry port.

Colquhoun, 28, from Dundee, was stopped by police at Holyhead Port after she came off a ferry from Ireland in January 2017.

She was found to have seven Pomeranian puppies but had no documents for the dogs, which she hoped to sell for more than £1000 each.

She was found guilty in her absence after she failed to turn up at Caernarfon Magistrates Court on May 22 for a videolink hearing from Forfar Sheriff Court.

Magistrates decided to proceed anyway after being told it was the seventh time the matter had been listed and she had failed to turn up on previous occasions. She faced four charges of contravening the Welfare of Animals (Transport) Order.

Colquhoun told officers she had collected the animals from a man in County Meath for £1500 and intended to give them to members of her family.

She was fined £1000 each for four separate charges and ordered to pay £889 in costs. Last night, Colquhoun said she was no longer involved in the puppy trade, after a string of convictions.

She said: “This has wrecked my life. I am not a puppy dealer any more and I learned a very harsh lesson. I have suffered huge stress and I was forced into bankruptcy and now things that happened nearly three years ago are getting raked up again. I just want to move on with my life.”

Colquhoun had earlier been found guilty at Forfar Sheriff Court in October 2017 of selling illegally trafficked pups from Ireland on Gumtree for large profits.