A 31-year-old California man has admitted to arranging for the shipment of crack cocaine and marijuana to a Bloomington home in a child's potty seat designed to look like a baseball.

Demar D. Powell, of Sacramento, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in St. Paul to conspiring to distribute the illicit drugs.

According to the criminal complaint:

A FedEx employee at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport alerted police to a suspicious package on Sept. 20, 2012. An airport police dog detected the odor of narcotics.

A U.S. Postal Service inspector was summoned and found nearly 10 ounces of crack cocaine and about 4 ounces of marijuana concealed in the potty seat.

The package indicated it was shipped from Sacramento to a house in the 10400 block of Quebec Avenue. Bloomington police "delivered" the package the next day to people at the home who said Powell was on his way to pick it up.

Police arrested Powell upon his arrival minutes later. He told police that he arranged for the package's delivery, thinking it would contain 5 pounds of marijuana and adding that he owed the sender $70,000.

Powell posted bond three days after his arrest and fled. He was arrested in April in California on a weapons charge. He now faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years.

Powell's criminal history in California includes four cocaine-related convictions and a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Public records show that Powell lived in south Minneapolis for a few years in the early 2000s.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482