Ten years after being charged, a former Crafton resident admitted on Wednesday to flooding Western Pennsylvania with cocaine and heroin transported overland from Mexico in hidden car compartments.

Andrew Beatty, 40, pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon on Dec. 17.

A plea agreement calls for him to serve 23 years in federal prison to be followed by five years supervised release.

Beatty agreed to forfeit $461,410, eight vehicles, $160,000 in jewelry and three guns.

A message left with his attorney — the fifth to be retained on the case — was not returned.

The initial 2014 criminal complaint against Beatty lays out a complex scheme accusing him of conspiring with a person named Guero, who worked for a Mexican drug ring, to bring drugs into Western Pennsylvania.

Drugs were stashed inside a system of hidden compartments in vehicles, and then the vehicles were loaded onto a car carrier and driven across the country, prosecutors said.

Beatty then returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to the Mexican ring in the same way.

According to court documents in the case, which featured the work of a dozen law enforcement agencies including the DEA, Homeland Security, Pittsburgh police and Pennsylvania State Police, investigators obtained wiretaps on 11 phones used by Beatty from late September 2013 through March 2014.

In December 2013, DEA agents asked the Ohio Highway Patrol to perform a traffic stop on a car carrier they suspected Beatty was using. Officers said they found $130,000 in cash.

Then, in January and February 2014, an undercover DEA agent posed twice as a courier and received $225,000 each time from Beatty and his associates.

During intercepted phone calls, investigators said they heard Guero and Beatty use code to talk about the deliveries of drugs and cash, disguising their conversations with references to cars and tires.

“What happened with the cars?” Guero asked on Feb. 28, 2014. “You already put the tires on it?”

“Nah, I ain’t,” Beatty replied. “Yeah, I ain’t getting to do it.”

Later, Guero responded, “Yeah, you can do at least two. By two you know. Two tires are two tires.”

Agents said the men were arranging to send two vehicles containing cash via car transport back to Guero to pay him.

In another set of intercepted calls in early March 2014, Guero told Beatty that the car transport company he had used refused to tell them where a target vehicle containing his cocaine shipment had been left until after they received payment.

Once that credit card payment was made later that day, according to an affidavit, Beatty received an address — 2 Penn Center West in Robinson— via text.

However, a DEA task force officer found the vehicle first.

The 1998 Infiniti with California plates was parked in a lot adjacent to that address in a business complex. The officer found the key in the rear, driver’s side wheel well.

A police dog detected drugs, prompting agents to get a search warrant and have the SUV towed.

Inside, they found 10 bundles of suspected cocaine concealed inside hidden compartments attached to the rims of three of the vehicle’s wheels, the affidavit said.

Later that afternoon, Beatty attempted to find someone to help him pick up the car, but it had already been seized by police.

Investigators conducting surveillance watched that evening as Beatty drove through the parking lots at that address for several hours unable to find the Infiniti.

Two weeks later, the U.S. Attorneys’ office said, agents executed several search warrants. They said they recovered $400,000 in cash, mainly from Beatty’s storage locker.

They also found 40 bricks of heroin and $40,000 in cash at the home of one of Beatty’s conspirators. A brick is slang for 50 baggies, or just over a gram.

While searching Beatty’s house, Beatty showed agents how to open a concealed compartment in a silver Acura there, the government said. Agents used that information when they found a gold Acura the next day parked near a conspirator’s house.

Agents recovered more heroin, three guns and four cell phones from the vehicle— all hidden inside a secret compartment in the door panel, just like the one Beatty had shown them a day earlier.

Four co-defendants were charged along with Beatty. Two of those cases are pending. The other defendants pleaded guilty and are serving prison time.

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