The estranged wife of Andy Rubin has accused the former Google executive who invented the Android operating system of defrauding her of millions of dollars and squandering money on affairs and a “sex ring.”
In court documents unsealed by a California judge this week, Rie Rubin, who married Rubin in 2009, claims her husband spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sexual favors and “affairs with multiple women” during their marriage.
These affairs, her lawsuit says, included ”‘ownership’ relationships with other women, whereby Rubin would pay for their expenses in exchange for offering them to other men.”
The complaint also accuses Rubin ― who left Google in 2014 after a female subordinate accused him of sexual assault ― of running a “sex ring” involving at least one woman. The woman, identified as “M” in the documents, would “agree to perform various sexual acts with multiple men” which would be filmed for “the enjoyment of Rubin and other men,” according to the documents.
“After these orgies, Rubin would himself have sex with ‘M’ off-camera,” the complaint alleges.
The suit was filed by Rie Rubin in San Mateo Superior Court in October, but had been temporarily sealed by the court. BuzzFeed’s Ryan Mac was the first to share the unsealed complaint on Tuesday.
Central to Rie Rubin’s suit is her claim that her estranged husband and his lawyer conspired to defraud her of millions of dollars by coercing her to sign a “sham” prenuptial agreement before their marriage.
According to the complaint, Rubin had recommended to his then-pregnant fiancée that she hire attorney Stephen Peters to represent her in the drawing up of the agreement. Rubin, however, allegedly failed to tell her that Peters had represented him in a previous divorce. The suit accuses the pair of conspiring together to design an agreement that excluded a vast portion of Rubin’s wealth.
Rie Rubin believed Peters would provide her with “independent legal advice, untainted by any conflict of interest” ― but the attorney “in reality [was] working exclusively for the benefit” of her soon-to-be husband, the suit claims.
Rie Rubin, who is also seeking a divorce from a separate family court, said she was shocked when she finally learned of Peters’ connection to her husband.
Rubin, she added, worked hard to conceal his income from her. The suit claims Rubin’s net worth grew from about $10 million to $350 million over the course of the marriage ― but “Rubin kept Plaintiff in the dark as to his sources of income, the amount of money the family had and what it was being spent on.”
“Without the sham agreement as a shield, Rubin would have had to consider the financial consequences of a divorce and more importantly Plaintiff would have had legal recourse to stop Rubin from wasting community property assets on his debauchery,” the complaint says.
Rubin’s legal team dismissed the allegations in a statement to BuzzFeed, calling them “a garden variety family law dispute involving a wife who regrets her decision to execute a prenuptial agreement.”
“It should be litigated in family law court in its entirety,” the statement said.
One of Rubin’s attorneys told the Verge that the complaint was “full of false claims.”
San Mateo Superior Court Judge Susan Greenberg said Tuesday that she was allowing the case to proceed, but told Rie Rubin’s attorneys to “submit an amended complaint that removes many of the salacious charges around Andy Rubin’s alleged payments to other women for relationships,” BuzzFeed reported.
Rubin, nicknamed the “father of Android,” drew harsh scrutiny last year after a New York Times report that he’d had been paid a $90 million exit package by Google after the sexual misconduct accusation. The report, which also included some of Rie Rubin’s allegations, sparked a worldwide walkout by 20,000 employees.
Rubin said at the time that the sexual misconduct allegation was “part of a smear campaign by my ex-wife to disparage me during a divorce and custody battle.”