Eric Schmidt’s ex-mistress, 31, sues former Google CEO, 70, over alleged stalking, abuse and ‘digital surveillance’

Eric Schmidt’s 31-year-old former mistress has accused the former Google CEO of stalking, abuse and “toxic masculinity” — claiming he subjected her to an “absolute digital surveillance system” as the two secretly fought over money, a failed AI startup and access to a sprawling Bel Air mansion, The Post has learned.

Michelle Ritter — Schmidt’s last publicly known extramarital lover, who was reportedly in an open marriage for years to Wendy Schmidt, his wife of 45 years — filed a temporary restraining order against the 70-year-old tech titan late last year, according to explosive court documents obtained by The Post.

In early December, Ritter and Schmidt — whose net worth is estimated by Bloomberg to be $44.8 billion — entered into a “written settlement agreement” that required Schmidt to make “substantial payments” to Ritter but the details of which 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 reached a new agreement, according to court documents.

In the since-withdrawn TRO request, Ritter claimed the tech mogul had banned her days earlier from the website of his startup Steel Perlot — an AI-focused venture capital firm in which Schmidt had invested $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told the Post.

“Please note Eric’s technical knowledge,” Ritter alleged in the filing. “I literally can’t make a private phone call or send a private email without supervision.”

The budding tech entrepreneur, 39 years her junior, also claims in the filing that Schmidt demanded she agree to “an order of silence regarding any allegations of sexual assault or harassment and sign a knowingly false statement that such allegations never occurred.”

Ritter did not elaborate on these allegations in the unredacted portions of his filing.

Skip Miller, the 31-year-old’s Los Angeles-based attorney, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Eric Schmidt also declined to comment.

In an 82-page response dated Oct. 8, Schmidt’s lawyers argued that Michelle Ritter’s “blatantly false complaint is a blatant abuse of the justice system.” But the vast majority of the legal fightback was redacted ahead of a downtown Los Angeles court hearing scheduled for Dec. 4.

The billionaire’s legal team — led by Los Angeles litigator Patricia Glaser — filed a motion Oct. 8 to seal the court documents, but no final ruling has yet been made on the matter.

In his December TRO filing, Ritter claimed: “Unfortunately, my former partner is extraordinarily powerful and capable and used every means possible.[s] to prevent me from accessing secure data, devices, finances or businesses, or simply to live my life in peace.

Two days before the case was filed in December, Ritter’s parents were allegedly followed to and from dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant by two private investigators. Cops were called and when officers questioned investigators, one said he worked for a “billionaire’s private security service” and was “not going to wake him up,” according to the filing.

The filing also said Ritter resided at 1060 Brooklawn Dr. — a 15,000-square-foot Bel Air mansion that Schmidt scooped up for $61 million from the heirs of the Hilton hotel dynasty. In the filing, Ritter requested that he be given exclusive access to the lavish resort – also seeking court protection for his dog, a German shepherd named Henry.

In an August 2024 article from technology news site The Information, Ritter was reportedly still holed up in the 13-room mansion, “with its old Hollywood touches, including a grand staircase, marble coffee table and manicured gardens, complete with a koi pond.”

Ritter herself added “a red sofa shaped like a pair of lips” and “a display case containing 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 adds that Ritter said she was “taking the next logical step to separate her life from Schmidt’s by preparing to move.”

Last month, Ritter — a 2021 Columbia Law School graduate who recently represented herself in the case — listed the address of 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 requested the restraining order, she and Schmidt entered into an amended settlement agreement. She withdrew the TRO request a few weeks later, but Schmidt has since failed to uphold her end of the bargain, she claimed.

Instead, Schmidt allegedly initiated a currently pending arbitration proceeding against her that she says she cannot afford to pay the $75,000 fee, calling it a “cynical effort to shield the dispute and win through economic and resource attrition,” according to court documents.

Ritter recently made the pages of the Post in May 2024 when Schmidt showed up to a swanky Los Angeles party with his wife in his place. But the new court documents claim an explosive story: Just a month earlier, a long-running conflict between them exploded when an April 4, 2024, legal mediation session took a bad turn, according to court documents.

“Schmidt and his attorney demanded that mediation could only take place if the allegations of abuse and harassment were excluded,” Ritter’s Sept. 8 filing states. Ritter’s attorney did not comply, according to his filing, and “the retaliation and consequences were immediate.”

Over the following weeks, Ritter claims she was “excluded from housing and access to her personal and business belongings in New York, Miami and Aspen,” according to the complaint. “Items will never be returned in their entirety. »

The following month, Schmidt and Ritter were the subject of a Forbes article claiming that their AI-focused startup was mired in chaos despite Schmidt’s $100 million investment. Steel Perlot “appears to be the first time he has publicly initiated a major business relationship with someone he is dating,” the magazine reported.

In January 2023, a Steel Perlot executive asked Schmidt for nearly $2.5 million to satisfy payroll and credit card debts accrued by the company and its subsidiaries that month, according to Forbes. “Eric, copied, has context,” the executive wrote, according to a copy of the email viewed by Forbes. Schmidt’s family office footed the bills, sources told the magazine.

In addition to the Hilton resort in Bel Air, Ritter held meetings with employees at various Schmidt residences, including “a penthouse in Manhattan and a sprawling lakefront estate near East Hampton that Schmidt purchased for $47 million in 2021,” according to the magazine.

According to The Information article, Ritter “had a tendency to drink wine out of coffee cups during business meetings and, in many cases, failed to show up to meetings she arranged with her employees,” citing three unnamed former employees.

Ritter also “asked employees to buy prescription drugs from her without a doctor’s order,” The Information reported, adding, “Some employees, in interviews, said they were afraid of her.”

Forbes also reported that another company, Audem Management, was formed in 2021 after Schmidt and Ritter began dating and is run by Ritter’s father. Audem “is used to pay a crew of butlers, housekeepers, maintenance and construction workers at properties owned by Schmidt and sometimes occupied by Ritter,” Forbes reported.

Employees told Forbes they felt like they were sold a “bill” about a “vanity project,” saying Ritter had implied that Steel Perlot’s investors included Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Mubadala, the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund. Spokespeople for all three declined to comment to Forbes, but a spokesperson for Schmidt told the outlet that the billionaire “intends to continue to financially support Steel Perlot.”

Schmidt was a “very, very active president,” Ritter told Forbes. “We have a very typical CEO-chairman relationship.” Sources told the Post that the former lovebirds officially broke up almost two years ago.

Schmidt has been described as the “Casanova” of Silicon Valley after years of flaunting much younger girlfriends and has spoken openly about how AI could ruin dating between men.

His alleged past flings include fashion designers, socialites, public relations executives and concert pianists. In 2019, Schmidt gave his then-girlfriend Alexandra Duisberg — a blonde medical graduate turned fashionista 32 years his junior — a massive 10-carat pink sapphire ring that sparked engagement rumors.

He was CEO of search engine giant Google from 2001 to 2017, after being recruited by founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to transform the company into a global technology juggernaut.