No sex, no seeing our son: lawsuit
The New York scion to a $100 million ice-cream fortune is torturing his estranged wife, paying a team of investigators $140,000 a week to trail her every move, hacking into her smart-home system to mess with the lights, music and temperature — even demanding that she have sex with him in order to see their son, according to a new lawsuit.
“If I didn’t sleep with him, unfortunately, I wouldn’t see my son for months at a time,” Susanne Gold alleged to The Post. “Instead of holding a gun over my head, raping me, he would hold my son over my head.”
Gold, 45, wed David M. Smith, 52 — whose father, Richard E. Smith, was CEO of CoolBrands International, the company behind Chipwich and Eskimo Pie — in 2008. At the time, she’d recently given birth to their son, who is now 11.
But the Plainview, LI, woman said there was no honeymoon period with Smith, who allegedly threatened her with a “bombardment of legal proceedings” if she didn’t become his wife.
“Smith dragged her to a justice of the peace and they were married,” Nassau County Supreme Court papers state.
But the couple never lived together. Instead, he bought her a home in Plainview while he stayed in nearby Roslyn.
Since the marriage, he “has engaged in trench warfare against” his spouse, the suit charges, hiring the International Investigative Group at a rate of $140,000 a week to “track, surveil and follow the plaintiff and her family and friends around the clock.”
The PIs even allegedly shadowed Gold to a domestic-violence shelter and on a recent cruise.
Firm attorney Lowell Sidney said his clients “always conducted themselves professionally.”
Smith took it upon himself to torment Gold, taking “control of the plaintiff ’s vehicle and lights, music and temperature in her home,” and made sex with him a “condition for granting her time to spend with their son,” the suit alleges.
He filed for divorce in January. The case is still pending.
She hasn’t seen her son since October, when she says she refused to sleep with Smith.
Smith did not return calls for comment.