What allegations has Michelle Ritter made against ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt?

Michelle Ritter has accused the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, of stalking, abuse, and controlling behavior.

The New York Post has reported that Ritter, 31, Schmidt's former mistress, accused the latter of “toxic masculinity." She claimed that he subjected her to an “absolute digital surveillance system” as they feuded over money, an unsuccessful AI startup, and a massive Bel Air mansion.

Ritter is notorious for her affair with the former CEO, who has reportedly been in an open marriage with his wife of 45 years, Wendy Schmidt. Per The Post, Ritter filed for a emporary restraining order against Schmidt, 70, last year. They settled in December 2024, where Schmidt was mandated to shell out “substantial payments” to Ritter.

The drama involving Michelle Ritter and Eric Schmidt explored:

The New York Post has reported that, as of this writing, the settlement between Michelle Ritter and Eric Schmidt remain unclear. However, later that month, Ritter filed another “domestic violence restraining order” against Schmidt, though she withdrew it earlier this year after both parties reached another settlement.

In the now-withdrawn request, she accused her former beau of icing her out of a website called Steel Perlot, an AI-focused startup she launched. Schmidt had reportedly invested $100 million in it.

“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.”

Michelle Ritter also claimed that Schmidt forced her into agreeing to

“a gag order on any sexual assault or harassment allegations and sign a knowingly false declaration that any such allegations never happened.” Her filing 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.”

However, the exact allegations remain unclear. In her filing, Michelle Ritter also claimed that her parents were followed to and from a dinner in Los Angeles, and when they called the cops on the private investigators, one of them said that he was working for a “billionaire’s private security detail” and was “not going to wake him up."

As of this writing, Eric Schmidt has yet to issue a public statement, though in a recent response, his lawyers claimed that

“Michelle Ritter’s demonstrably false Complaint is a blatant abuse of the judicial system.”

Eric Schmidt is most known for having helming Google for over a decade in the early 2000s. Just last week, he made headlines when he warned netizens about the dangers of AI models and how they could be hacked. During a recent Sifted Summit tech conference in London, he said:

"There’s evidence that you can take models, closed or open, and hack them to remove their guardrails. During training, they learn a lot of things. A bad example would be that they learn how to kill someone." He continued, “All of the major companies make it impossible for those models to answer that question. Good decision. Everyone does this. They do it well, and they do it for the right reasons. But there’s evidence that they can be reverse-engineered, and there are many other examples like that.”

Stay tuned to SoapCentral for more.

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