When Columbia University law and MBA student Michelle Ritter met former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt in 2020, she said she wanted to pitch a potential investment in a sports tech startup she had been developing.
That dinner blossomed into far more, a romance and business partnership in which she says the 70-year-old billionaire invested in excess of $100 million into a jointly owned tech incubator — before it all fell apart.
Now, Ritter is accusing Schmidt of stealing business out from under her, sexually assaulting her twice during their relationship, and tapping his Google background to hack into her email and online computer files, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“During their relationship, Schmidt confided that when he worked at Google, he built an insider “backdoor” to Google servers with a team of Google engineers in order to spy on Google employees. Accordingly, the backdoor enabled him to access anyone’s Google account and private information,” the lawsuit says.
Google is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit and is alleged to “knowingly acquiescing in, failing to remedy, and materially assisting the unauthorized access” into Ritter’s accounts despite being provided notice. Schmidt and the company are accused of violating the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and a section of the state penal code that prohibits wiretapping.
Patricia Glaser, an attorney representing Schmidt, called the lawsuit “yet another desperate and destructive effort to publish false and defamatory statements to escape accountability from an existing arbitration over a business dispute.”
Glaser added: “The claims made here are directly contradicted by her own words … and are just a final Hail Mary to save her from the consequences of her own actions. We are confident that we will prevail on both the specific legal issue enforcing the arbitration and disproving these fabricated pathetic allegations.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complaint is the latest filing in a legal dispute that stretches back to at least December 2024, when Ritter sought a domestic violence restraining order against Schmidt. She later withdrew it after reaching a financial settlement with Schmidt with whom she had started the high-tech New York incubator with offices in Los Angeles, according to court records.
In her new lawsuit, Ritter alleges that Schmidt has not honored the settlement due to false accusations she was behind a media leak. She is seeking to have the settlement, which requires arbitration of disputes, thrown out.
Schmidt’s attorneys have called her legal filings a “blatant abuse of the judicial system” and a “transparent hit piece intended to smear and defame” Schmidt, according to court records. He is seeking to have the dispute settled in arbitration.
Several records in the case are under seal and many filings are heavily redacted. The lawsuit seeks at least $100 million in damages, with the next hearing set for Dec. 4. She is being represented by the law firm of prominent Los Angeles attorney Skip Miller.
Schmidt served as Google chief executive from 2001 to 2011 and later as the chairman of the Silicon Valley company and its parent, Alphabet Inc., until 2017. He retains shares in parent Alphabet worth about $14 billion giving him a net worth of about $34 billion, according to Forbes. He owns multiple homes in Los Angeles.
In the application for the December 2024 restraining order, Ritter alleged she lived in an “absolute digital surveillance system” and that Schmidt had directed affiliates to steal her corporate website, take control of her digital business records and have personal investigators follow her parents, according to a court filing.
The restraining order request also asked the judge to order Schmidt to not assault her “sexually or otherwise.”
The lawsuit filed on Wednesday provides more details about their business ventures and alleges a personal relationship that developed to the point that Schmidt made promises to marry her and have children, despite their 39-year age gap.
The lawsuit states their Steel Perlot venture was a success, with Schmidt investing more than $100 million into the accelerator and its startups in AI, crypto and other industries — prompting Schmidt to wrest control of the venture and its businesses from her.
Media reports suggest otherwise. Forbes has written the venture ran out of money in 2003 and needed millions from Schmidt to meet payroll and other expenses.
The lawsuit alleges that Schmidt became abusive as the relationship progressed and he “forcibly raped” her while on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in November 2021 and had sex with her without her consent during the Burning Man festival in Nevada in August 2023.
Schmidt, who has been married more than 40 years, has been linked romantically in the media with a series of much younger women.
The bitter dispute with Ritter echoes another business disagreement he had with public relations executive Marcy Simon, with whom he had a two-decade relationship that ended in 2014. It also involved a troubled joint business venture, according to a New York Times report. The report did not involve sexual assault claims.
Schmidt has achieved a certain gravitas in Silicon Valley, serving as tech advisor to the Obama administration and the military, testifying about artificial intelligence on Capitol Hill and giving away more than $1 billion in charity.
He’s also a part owner of the Washington Commanders football team and has amassed a real estate portfolio estimated to be worth several hundred million dollars.
Schmidt is reported to have spent $110 million this year on the 56,000-square-foot mansion in Holmby Hills built by the late producer Aaron Spelling. In 2021, he acquired a 15,000-square-foot Bel Air estate previously owned by the Hilton family, where court records indicate Ritter lived at the time she filed the restraining order.
Schmidt earlier this year took a controlling interest in Relativity Space, a Long Beach startup founded in 2015 with the intent to bring 3-D manufacturing to rocketry.
However, it has since shifted its focus and Schmidt indicated in a social media post that his interest may have to do with launching AI data centers into space due to their huge power needs.
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