When Michelle Ritter, a law and MBA student at Columbia University, met former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2020, she said she wanted to pitch a potential investment in a sports technology startup she was developing.
That dinner blossomed into a romance and business partnership, with the 70-year-old billionaire investing more than $100 million in a co-owned technology incubator, she said, but then everything fell apart.
Ritter now accuses Schmidt of stealing her job from under her, sexually assaulting her twice during their relationship, and using his Google background to hack into her emails and online computer files, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“During their relationship, Mr. Schmidt disclosed that while he was working at Google, he worked with a team of Google engineers to build an insider ‘backdoor’ into Google servers in order to spy on Google employees. The backdoor thus gave Mr. Schmidt access to anyone’s Google accounts and personal information,” the complaint states.
Google is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and despite being notified, it is said to have “knowingly condoned the unauthorized access to Ritter’s account, failed to correct it, and essentially aided in the unauthorized access.” Mr. Schmidt and his company are accused of violating the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act and provisions of the state criminal law prohibiting wiretapping.
Patricia Glaser, an attorney representing Mr. Schmidt, called the lawsuit “another desperate and destructive effort to issue false and defamatory statements to escape liability from an existing arbitration over a business dispute.”
Glazer added: “The allegations here are in direct contradiction to her own words…and are merely a last hurray to save her from the consequences of her own actions. We are confident that we will prevail both on the specific legal issues forcing arbitration and on disproving the pathetic claims that have been fabricated.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complaint is the latest in a legal dispute dating back to at least December 2024, when Ritter sought a domestic violence restraining order against Schmidt. She later backed out of the deal after reaching a financial settlement with Schmidt, who co-founded a New York tech incubator with offices in Los Angeles, according to court records.
Mr. Ritter alleges in the new lawsuit that Mr. Schmidt defaulted on the settlement by falsely accusing him of being involved in media leaks. She is seeking to overturn the proposed settlement, which required arbitration of the dispute.
According to court records, Schmidt’s lawyers argued that Schmidt’s lawsuit was a “blatant abuse of the judicial system” and a “clear hit piece intended to defame and defame” Schmidt. He is asking that the dispute be resolved through arbitration.
Some records in the case have been sealed and many filings have been heavily redacted. The lawsuit seeks at least $100 million in damages, and the next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 4. She is represented by the law firm of prominent Los Angeles attorney Skip Miller.
Mr. Schmidt was Google’s chief executive officer from 2001 to 2011, then chairman of the Silicon Valley company and its parent company Alphabet Inc. until 2017. Schmidt owns about $14 billion worth of stock in parent company Alphabet, giving him a net worth of about $34 billion, according to Forbes. He owns several homes in Los Angeles.
In her December 2024 restraining order application, Ritter claimed that she lived under an “absolute digital surveillance system” and that Schmidt had directed affiliates to steal company websites, take control of digital business records and have private investigators tail his parents, according to court filings.
The request for a restraining order asked a judge to order Schmidt not to assault her “sexually or otherwise.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, provides details about their business ventures and claims that despite a 39-year age difference, Mr. Schmidt’s personal relationship developed to the point where he promised to marry her and have children with her.
The lawsuit states that Schmidt invested more than $100 million in accelerators and startups in AI, cryptocurrency and other industries, and that the Steel Perlot venture was successful, prompting Schmidt to wrest control of the venture and its business from her.
Media reports suggest otherwise. Forbes wrote that the business ran out of money in 2003 and needed millions of dollars from Mr. Schmidt to cover salaries and other expenses.
The suit alleges that Schmidt became abusive as the relationship progressed, “forcibly raping” her on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in November 2021 and having sex with her without her consent during the Burning Man festival in Nevada in August 2023.
Schmidt, who has been married for more than 40 years, has been reported in the media to have romantic relationships with women much younger than him.
The bitter dispute with Ritter reflects another business disagreement with public relations executive Marcy Simon, with whom he had a 20-year relationship that ended in 2014. That included a troubled joint venture, the New York Times reported. The report did not include any allegations of sexual assault.
Mr. Schmidt enjoys a degree of prestige in Silicon Valley, having served as a technical advisor to the Obama administration and the military, testified on artificial intelligence on Capitol Hill, and engaged in philanthropy.
He is also a part-owner of the Washington Commanders football team and has amassed a fortune estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Earlier this year, Schmidt reportedly spent $110 million on a 56,000-square-foot mansion built in Holmby Hills by the late producer Aaron Spelling. In 2021, he acquired a 15,000-square-foot Bel Air property previously owned by the Hilton family, but court records show Ritter was living there at the time he filed for the restraining order.
Earlier this year, Schmidt acquired Relativity Space, a Long Beach startup founded in 2015 to bring 3D manufacturing to rockets.
But then his focus shifted, and Schmidt suggested in a social media post that he might be interested in launching into space, which requires huge amounts of power.
