Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s ex-mistress’ rape allegations against the billionaire have been sensationally ruled “false” and she will have to pay him more than $10 million in damages following an arbitration award, Page Six can reveal.
Retired Washington state judge Beth Andrus, who served as arbitrator, wrote that Michelle Ritter had “defamed Mr. Schmidt by falsely and maliciously accusing him of sexual assault and sexual harassment,” and noted that Ritter, 32, had done “everything in her power” to avoid questioning about the rape accusations under oath.
“I believe that Ritter’s statement that Schmidt raped her is false. Schmidt categorically denies under oath that Ritter ever sexually assaulted or physically abused her,” Andrus wrote in a preliminary ruling in the case’s arbitration proceedings, which was viewed by Page Six.
“Either her rape accusation was false and she knew it was false and corroborated the falsehood, or Ritter swore to the false accusation in exchange for $14 million and a $1 million payment to her parents,” Andrus wrote.
This was a reference to a declaration that Mr. Ritter signed as part of an earlier settlement agreement with Mr. Schmidt, in which Mr. Ritter testified that all of his contact with Mr. Schmidt was “completely consensual” and “was never forced or coerced.”
The arbitrator found Mr. Ritter liable to pay Mr. Schmidt $10.7 million, an amount that is likely to increase in a final decision in the coming weeks.
Andrus also criticized Ritter for making her claims on social media, writing, “Ms. Ritter has chosen to use a very public forum to manipulate this system for her own personal benefit, rather than for the benefit of victims as a whole.”
“Mr. Ritter’s shameful and false claims of sexual assault amounted to coercion and punishment of Mr. Schmidt, undermining and impeding the legitimate victim’s pursuit of justice,” Andrus wrote.
The findings were announced April 29, but are now public because Ritter filed a federal lawsuit in California and attached the arbitrator’s ruling to his affidavit. The federal lawsuit challenges the arbitration award and asserts various other claims.
Ritter had also accused Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, of stalking her and other employees and building insider “backdoors” into Google servers to spy on her and other employees.
She began dating Schmidt in 2021 – the tech giant helped finance Schmidt’s AI startup Steel Perlot with $100 million – but they reportedly broke up by May 2024.
She filed an explosives lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court last September, alleging that Schmidt, 71, assaulted her on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in 2021 and again at the Burning Man festival in 2023.
“He followed me into the shower, threw me against the wall and forcibly raped me,” Ritter claimed. “I begged him to stop and screamed that he was hurting me, but he ignored my pleas. The next morning, Schmidt tried to convince me that I had enjoyed the assault.”
She similarly claimed that in August 2023, at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, Schmidt began having sex with her while she was sleeping.
“I told him a firm ‘no’ and tried to get him to stop, but I have learned that trying to physically resist is futile and only makes things worse,” she added in the same legal filing.
Mr. Ritter also accused Mr. Schmidt of unwanted voyeurism and coercion into sexual fetishes.
“On numerous occasions, Schmidt secretly photographed me naked without my consent, including entering the bathroom to take pictures while I was showering,” she said.
The relationship ended in early 2024 when photos of Schmidt and a 22-year-old woman were leaked, according to court documents. After the breakup, Ritter claimed the surveillance escalated.
Schmidt has been married to his wife Wendy since 1980, and their marriage is reportedly open. He was recently linked to Gloria-Sophie Bourkant, a 27-year-old model, economist and PhD candidate who is the daughter of Bavarian state minister and president Markus Söder, but he is not currently dating anyone seriously.
Ms. Ritter argued in her filing that she was not allowed to give evidence and called the judge’s statements “false, derogatory and defamatory.”
Ms. Ritter said she was the victim of a “pattern of abuse of process” and claimed that the arbitration process “was not used to adjudicate a genuine dispute on the merits, but rather to fabricate a damages award against a professional sexual assault reporter through a procedural mechanism that she could not effectively challenge.”
Mr. Schmidt’s attorney, Craig Marcus, declined to comment. Page Six has reached out to Ritter for comment.
