A 44-year-old Irvine man with a lengthy track record of convictions and arrests, who authorities say posted bail and fled to Peru to avoid a courtroom, was back in Orange County custody this week to face drug-possession charges.
FBI agents extradited Erick Grant Rustad, arrested in Peru in February, to Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Oct. 13, and took him into Irvine police, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. He was then placed in the Orange County Jail.
Rustad fled first to Mexico and then to Peru, where his mother is a citizen, after he posted $100,000 bail following his April 2025 arrest on suspicion of being a felon in possession of fentanyl with two prior hard-drug possession convictions, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
At the time, Rustad had 11 open criminal cases in Orange County and was out on bail for two felony cases, prosecutors said.
In May 2023, Irvine police served a search warrant at Rustad’s home and vehicle and found several notebooks with names, credit-card numbers and Social Security numbers as well as checks, blank access cards and other identifying information, prosecutors alleged.
The authorities also found printers and methamphetamine and information for 14 people who said they didn’t know Rustad or allow him access to their personal information, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
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A month later, prosecutors said, Rustad was seen on surveillance video stealing a Maserati key, and in March 2024, while out on bail for that alleged crime, he was accused of breaking into a parking structure to steal bikes and depositing a stolen and altered check for nearly $3,000 into his account.
While he was out on bail, police arrested Rustad and another person after prosecutors alleged they found dozens of unused baggies, methamphetamine concealed in a hidden compartment under the vehicle’s hood, and a device that could flip the vehicle’s license plate using a button.
Rustad was arrested again in June 2024 after officers saw someone delivering a weighted blue bag to his Irvine home. Police served a search warrant and said they found a scale, plastic bags with methamphetamine and fentanyl, empty clear baggies, crushed Xanax pills and two cellphones. He has also been accused of stealing a package off someone’s doorstep and taking sunglasses from a Nordstrom.
Prosecutors said Rustad was the ninth person this year extradited from another country back to Orange County to face criminal charges. If convicted of all charges, he faces a maximum sentence of 29 years and six months.
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