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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is entangled in a bitter legal dispute with his former partner, as revealed in court documents exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail.
Michelle Ritter, a 31-year-old tech entrepreneur, has leveled serious accusations against the 70-year-old billionaire. She alleges that Schmidt sexually assaulted her, spied on her using hidden cameras, and misappropriated her business ideas and companies, according to a recent court filing.
In response, Schmidt has filed legal documents refuting her claims, labeling Ritter a “liar.” He argues that she concocted these allegations to avoid a confidential settlement concerning their shared business ventures and asserts he possesses text messages to substantiate his defense.
Documents released last Wednesday in a Los Angeles court detail Ritter’s accusations of abuse, describing a manipulative figure who allegedly pushed her, verbally abused her, and subjected her to sexual humiliation in front of colleagues. She also claims he exploited his technological expertise to surveil her.
Ritter’s lawsuit against her former boyfriend and business associate includes allegations of sexual battery, harassment, domestic violence, and violations of computer hacking and wiretapping laws.
Schmidt’s lawyer called the claims ‘false and defamatory’, ‘fabricated’ and ‘pathetic’.
Ritter launched a lawsuit in September, but many of the filings were sealed or partially redacted.
Her lawyers have laid out her side of the whole ignoble story in a 70-page document filed last Wednesday.
Michelle Ritter’s bombshell complaint against ex-lover Eric Schmidt laid bare shocking details of her abuse, rape, and surveillance claims
Ritter’s resumé includes a bachelors from Johns Hopkins, a JD/MBA from Columbia University, and a startup she claims ownership of, valued at $161 million.
She says she met Schmidt through a business contact in September 2020, when the three of them had dinner and she pitched a company, StarX Networks, that allows fans to financially invest in athletes’ performance.
At the time, she was a 26-year-old Columbia student and he was 65, married, and newly retired from Google where he had been CEO and chairman, with a net worth of $48.3 billion.
Schmidt is still married to his wife of 45 years, Wendy, 70. The two reportedly have an open relationship, and he has been previously linked to glamorous younger women, including fashion designer Shoshanna Gruss, socialite Ulla Parker, former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner, and former Olympic skater Alexandra Duisberg.
In her legal filing, Ritter claimed she rebuffed his initial romantic advances and he instead presented himself as a ‘mentor and potential investor.’
‘He jet-setted with her around the world, introduced her to diplomats and prominent industry figures,’ her complaint said, adding that she eventually gave in to his ‘unrelenting pursuit’ of romance.
‘Ritter only allowed herself to fall in love with Schmidt because he repeatedly assured her that his marriage was over and that he and his wife were separated,’ the 31-year-old’s legal filing said.
As they became close, she helped edit his book co-written with Henry Kissinger and he sought her advice on an appointment in the Biden administration. He also had her help draft his testimony to the Senate, and took her advice to buy the Washington Commanders NFL team, Ritter claimed.
Schmidt has been married to his wife of 45 years, Wendy, (pictured this month) with whom he has an open relationship
Schmidt was first reported to be dating Ritter, then a Columbia Law graduate, in 2021. They are pictured leaving a star-studded party in Beverly Hills in 2023
They moved in together in 2021, planned to raise a family and he had Ritter retrieve her eggs, her legal filing said. He even bought her parents a home next to hers in LA.
He assured her his divorce from his wife, Wendy, was imminent, she claimed. In an email pictured in the legal complaint, sent May 6, 2022, with the subject ‘divorce’, Schmidt allegedly wrote: ‘Should be inside 3 months.’
Schmidt and Ritter built a startup incubator together called Steel Perlot, she claimed, which launched companies including the $161 million payment network firm Keeta.
But their auspicious partnership soured when he began ‘a pattern of coercive control and abuse’, her legal filing said.
Schmidt told Ritter she needed to go to business meetings looking ‘really hot and sexy,’ and pressured her to ‘use prescription stimulants to lose weight,’ her complaint claimed – then he allegedly ‘mocked’ her for looking ’emaciated.’
Her legal complaint claimed the ex-Google CEO made sexual remarks about Ritter to colleagues, including: ‘You should see her naked’, asking for comments on how ‘sexy’ she looked, and saying when she misspoke, ‘At least she’s good looking.’
Then, while on a yacht around November 2021, Ritter claims Schmidt raped her.
‘He followed me into a shower, slammed me against the wall, and forcibly raped me,’ she wrote in a sworn declaration filed last Wednesday.
‘I begged him to stop and cried out that he was hurting me, but he ignored my pleas.
‘The next morning, Schmidt attempted to convince me that I enjoyed the assault.’
He also started having sex with her while she slept at Burning Man Festival in Nevada in August 2023, she claimed.
Ritter, who is 39 years Schmidt’s junior, filed for a temporary restraining order against the 70-year-old late last year
The 31-year-old tech entrepreneur is seen posing with Ivanka Trump at a party
‘I clearly told him “no” and tried to get him to stop, but I had learned that attempting to resist physically would be futile and make things worse,’ her declaration said.
She also accused him of unwanted voyeurism, and claimed he ‘pressured me to participate in his sexual fetishes, despite my express refusals.’
‘On multiple occasions, Schmidt surreptitiously photographed me without my consent while I was nude, including entering the bathroom to take photographs while I was showering,’ her sworn statement said.
In the November 19 filing, Ritter also claimed Schmidt ‘shoved me on multiple occasions, leaving me with bruises and scratches’.
‘During arguments, he often intimidated me by cornering me, standing inches from my face and screaming at the top of his lungs,’ she wrote.
She described one ‘altercation’ at their shared residence in New York when he allegedly shoved her into a desk.
Schmidt was also described as ‘erratic’ in her filing, claiming he ‘undressed and exposed himself to the flight crew’ of his private jet on one occasion, and transported marijuana on the plane.
Ritter said she finally split with Schmidt after photos emerged of him with a 22-year-old woman in early 2024.
In a May 2021 email included in the proposed complaint, Ritter discussed their plans to have her retrieve her eggs, to which he replied: ‘Love you even more!!’
Schmidt assured Ritter his divorce from his wife was imminent, with a May 6, 2022 email with the subject ‘Divorce’, showing Schmidt allegedly wrote ‘Should be inside 3 months’
But he began ‘cyberstalking’ and surveilling her, Ritter’s legal filing claimed.
She claimed he had installed spyware on her computer around November 2021, after the alleged rape, allowing him to view her texts, emails and documents.
‘On various occasions, Ritter would be using her email account or Google Workspace and saw emails and documents being deleted or altered as if someone else were controlling her keystrokes,’ her legal filing said.
She claimed the digital surveillance was not just limited to her.
While dating, Schmidt confessed to Ritter that he had made a ‘backdoor’ to Google servers that allowed him ‘to access anyone’s Google account and private information’, her legal complaint claimed.
Ritter’s attorneys believe ‘Schmidt’s misuse of his backdoor access to Google servers extended beyond Ritter and the Google employees he targeted,’ the legal filing said.
She said documents with her forged signature were used to ‘alter corporate rights and create a false paper trail’, and texts she never wrote appeared in her phone conversations with Schmidt.
The Google billionaire invested a reported $100 million into Steel Perlot, though Ritter claimed in her legal filing that he also used accounting tricks to saddle the firm with other companies’ debt.
Ritter was ultimately stripped of control of the companies she worked on with Schmidt and removed as CEO of another payment technology firm, Knox, her filing claimed.
In April 2024, Schmidt also locked Ritter out of their shared residence, leaving her belongings inside, according to her court claims.
Ritter says she met Schmidt through a business contact in September 2020, when the three of them had dinner and she pitched an idea for a company
Lawyers for Schmidt have called the claims ‘false and defamatory’, ‘fabricated’ and ‘pathetic’
That summer, she found he had ‘covertly installed cameras and listening devices in the Los Angeles residence he had acquired for her,’ the complaint said.
Private investigators were caught tailing her elderly parents, she alleged, and when questioned by police, they admitted to working for a ‘billionaire’s private security detail’, Ritter’s declaration said.
Her amended complaint accused Schmidt of breaking into a Tesla Ritter drove and taking her laptop while she dined at Nobu restaurant in Malibu on November 7, 2024.
Ritter alleged there is CCTV footage of the incident captured by the restaurant’s cameras.
Ritter’s shocking new allegations were written up in a proposed complaint, which her lawyer submitted publicly in court last Wednesday, asking the LA judge permission to officially file it as an amended complaint.
She and Schmidt have been in private arbitration after the two entered into a legal agreement to separate their business dealings after they split.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, a source close to Schmidt’s legal team claimed the Google billionaire has been ‘hamstrung’ responding to her claims publicly due to a confidentiality clause in the agreement.
Ritter argues that a 2021 law against gagging claims of sex abuse in arbitration applies to her.
In a fiery docket response today, Schmidt’s lawyers said the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act ‘only applies to disputes that arose after the arbitration agreement’ and that Ritter does not qualify.
They accused her of ‘compulsive lying’ in the filing, adding that they have ‘text messages conclusively disproving the claims’ – though they did not reproduce those in the filing.
In his response this Wednesday, Schmidt claimed their dispute arose from ‘Ritter’s mismanagement of SPM’, their company together, and that ‘Ritter fabricated numerous false claims against Schmidt, including her fictional assault claims, in an attempt to gain negotiating leverage.’
His legal filing says her claims amount to an attempt to ‘extort’ the Google billionaire.
He claims that she already broke their agreement in December last year when she allegedly refused to move out of the Beverly Hills mansion he let her stay in, ’stole’ $1.1 million of personal property, and ‘leaked’ information to the media.
Schmidt’s lawyers also filed a declaration from his real estate manager attesting to the alleged $1.1 million ‘missing’ property from the house.
Ritter was originally told by Judge Michael Small in September to continue her dispute privately in the arbitration with Schmidt, and later put a stay on the public case.
Schmidt’s public filings in the case are heavily redacted but contain some public allegations against Ritter, including that she has gone through nine lawyers, and that one of them allegedly placed a lien against her.
Ritter had already made some allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct in a Domestic Violence Restraining Order application last December, but ‘rescinded, revoked, retracted, and denied’ in a joint filing with Schmidt a week later.
She claims in her latest legal filing that she did so after pressure from his lawyers.
Patricia Glaser, Schmidt’s attorney, told the Daily Mail that Ritter’s filings last week were ‘the latest desperate and destructive effort to publish false and defamatory statements – which are directly contradicted by her own words’.
Glaser added this is ‘a final Hail Mary to evade the consequences of her own actions’.
‘We are confident that we will prevail on both this specific legal issue and disproving these pathetic, false and defamatory statements,’ she said.
