The 31-year-old former mistress of Eric Schmidt has accused the ex-Google CEO of stalking, abuse and “toxic masculinity” — claiming that he subjected her to an “absolute digital surveillance system” as the pair have secretly tussled over cash, a failed AI startup and access to a sprawling Bel Air mansion, The Post has learned.
Michelle Ritter — the latest publicly known extramarital paramour for Schmidt, who for years has reportedly maintained an open marriage with Wendy Schmidt, his wife of 45 years — filed for a temporary restraining order against the 70-year-old tech titan late last year, according to bombshell court documents obtained by The Post.
In early December, Ritter and Schmidt — whose net worth is estimated by Bloomberg at $44.8 billion — struck a “written settlement agreement” that required Schmidt to make “substantial payments” to Ritter but whose details remain under seal, according to a Sept. 8 filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
But just a week later on Dec. 11, Ritter filed an explosive “domestic violence restraining order” against Schmidt — only to withdraw it three weeks later on Jan. 6 after the two sides apparently came to a fresh agreement, court documents show.
In the since-withdrawn TRO request, Ritter claimed that the tech tycoon days earlier had locked her out of the website of her startup Steel Perlot — an AI-focused venture firm into which Schmidt had plowed $100 million, a source close to the situation told The Post.
“Please note Eric’s technical background,” Ritter alleged in the filing. “I literally cannot have a private phone call or send a private email without surveillance.”
The budding tech entrepreneur, 39 years his junior, also claims in the filing that Schmidt demanded that she agree to “a gag order on any sexual assault or harassment allegations and sign a knowingly false declaration that any such allegations never happened.”
Ritter didn’t elaborate on those allegations in the unredacted portions of her filing.
Skip Miller, an LA-based lawyer for the 31-year-old, declined to comment. A spokesman for Eric Schmidt also declined to comment.
In an 82-page response on Oct. 8, lawyers for Schmidt claimed that “Michelle Ritter’s demonstrably false Complaint is a blatant abuse of the judicial system.” But the vast majority of the legal riposte has been redacted ahead of a court hearing in downtown Los Angeles that’s slated for Dec. 4.
The billionaire’s legal team — headed by hard-charging LA litigator Patricia Glaser — filed a motion on Oct. 8 to seal the court documents, but a final ruling has not yet been issued on the matter.
In her December TRO filing, Ritter alleged, “Unfortunately, my former partner is extraordinarily powerful and capable and has used every mean[s] to block me from getting access to secure data, devices, finances, or businesses, or to simply live my life in peace.”
Two days before the December filing, Ritter’s parents allegedly were followed to and from dinner at an LA restaurant by a pair of private eyes. The cops were called and when officers questioned the PIs, one said he worked for a “billionaire’s private security detail” and was “not going to wake him up,” according to the filing.
The filing also indicated Ritter had been staying at 1060 Brooklawn Dr. — a 15,000-square-foot Bel Air mansion that Schmidt had scooped up for $61 million from heirs of the Hilton hotel dynasty. In the filing, Ritter asked that she be given exclusive access to the lavish compound — also requesting court protection for her dog, a German Shepherd named Henry.
In an August 2024 article by tech news site The Information, Ritter was reportedly still holed up at the 13-bedroom mansion, “with its old Hollywood touches including a sweeping staircase, marble coffee table and well-tended gardens, complete with a koi pond.”
Ritter herself had added “a red couch in the shape of a pair of lips” and “a glass case holding her guitars,” according to the story. Outside, “a large rainbow-colored ‘Love’ sign that a friend of Schmidt’s created for one of their trips to Burning Man,” stood near a wrought-iron gate at the end of the driveway, the tech site reported.
The article added that Ritter said she was “taking the next logical step to separate her life from Schmidt’s by preparing to move out.”
Last month, Ritter — a 2021 Columbia Law School grad who recently has represented herself in the case — listed an address for what appeared to be a relatively modest apartment in Beverly Hills located upstairs from a Jersey Mike’s sandwich shop.
Ritter claimed in the filing that on Dec. 17, less than a week after she filed for the restraining order, she and Schmidt struck an amended settlement agreement. She pulled the TRO request a few weeks later, but Schmidt has since failed to live up to his end of the bargain, she claimed.
Instead, Schmidt allegedly has been pressing an arbitration proceeding that’s currently pending against her whose $75,000 fee she says she cannot afford to pay, calling it “a cynical effort to protect the dispute and win by economic and resource attrition,” according to court papers.
Ritter most recently made the pages of The Post in May 2024 when Schmidt showed up to a swanky LA party with his wife instead of her. But the fresh court filings claim an explosive back story: Just a month earlier, a long-simmering conflict between them had exploded when an April 4, 2024 legal mediation session took a wrong turn, according to court documents.
“Schmidt and his counsel demanded that mediation could only proceed if allegations of abuse and harassment were excluded,” Ritter’s Sept. 8 filing alleged. Ritter’s lawyer didn’t comply, according to her filing, and “the retaliation and consequences were immediate.”
During the following weeks, Ritter claims was “locked out of all housing and access to her personal and business belongings in New York, Miami and Aspen,” according to the complaint. “The items would not be returned in total, ever.”
The next month, Schmidt and Ritter became the subject of a Forbes expose that alleged her AI-focused startup was mired in chaos despite Schmidt’s $100 million investment. Steel Perlot “appears to be the first time he’s publicly entered into a major business relationship with someone he is dating,” the magazine reported.
In January 2023, a Steel Perlot executive asked Schmidt nearly $2.5 million to meet payroll and credit card debts racked up by the company and its subsidiaries that month, according to Forbes. “Eric, copied, has the context,” the executive wrote, according to a copy of the email seen by Forbes. Schmidt’s family office covered the bills, sources told the magazine.
In addition to the Hilton compound in Bel Air, Ritter held meetings with employees at various Schmidt residences including “a penthouse in Manhattan and a sprawling lakeside estate near East Hampton that Schmidt purchased for $47 million in 2021,” according to the magazine.
According to the article in The Information, Ritter “had a tendency to drink wine out of coffee mugs during business meetings and in many instances failed to show up to meetings she had set up with her employees,” citing three former unnamed employees.
Ritter also “asked employees to buy prescription drugs for her without orders from a doctor,” The Information reported, adding, “Some employees, in interviews, said they were afraid of her.”
Forbes also reported that another company, Audem Management, was established in 2021 after Schmidt and Ritter started dating and is managed by Ritter’s father. Audem “is used to pay a staff of butlers, housekeepers, maintenance and construction workers at properties owned by Schmidt and at times occupied by Ritter,” Forbes reported.
Employees told Forbes they felt they were sold a “bill of goods” about a “vanity project,” claiming Ritter had implied that Steel Perlot’s investors included Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg and Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates. Spokespeople for all three declined to comment to Forbes, but a spokesman for Schmidt told the outlet the billionaire “intends to continue supporting Steel Perlot financially.”
Schmidt was a “very, very active chairman,” Ritter told Forbes. “We have a very typical CEO-chairman relationship.” Sources told The Post that the former lovebirds formally broke up nearly two years ago.
Schmidt has been described as Silicon Valley’s ‘Casanova” after years of flaunting much younger girlfriends and has spoken openly about how AI could ruin dating for men.
His alleged past flings include fashion designers, socialites, PR executives, and concert pianists. In 2019, Schmidt gifted his then girlfriend, Alexandra Duisberg — a blond medical school grad turned fashionista who was 32 years his junior — a huge, 10-carat pink sapphire ring that kick-started engagement rumors.
He was the CEO of search engine giant Google from 2001 to 2017, having been brought in by founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to turn the company into a global tech juggernaut.
