Vincent Pinela (Angel Chevrestt)
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She wanted revenge.
An ex-lover of Bronx state Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera said that after he dumped her, she made his life a living hell — and finally had him booted as head of her crony-packed nonprofit.
“It was, basically, if this relationship ends, then your job ends — and that’s exactly what happened,” Vincent Pinela told The Post. “Everything started to get crazy.’’
He claims that after he broke things off with Rivera in March 2009, she moved several Assembly staffers — including her son’s live-in girlfriend — to his Bronx Council for Economic Development’s Lydig Avenue office to act as moles and even delayed state cash promised the group.
The son’s girlfriend, Ebony Rubio, would give Pinela “grief” and “watch him like a hawk” while there, Pinela said.
Exasperated, the agency chief griped in an e-mail to the board: “[Rivera] has had her employees approach me in an aggressive manner and . . . [Rubio] has spent most of her time reporting back to her office on what time I come into the office, how long she thinks I take lunch, and what time I leave the office for the day.”
The allegation was just one of several paybacks that Rivera — part of a powerful political family — tossed at Pinela for breaking up with her after 2 1/2 years, he said.
She also allegedly stalled his agency’s state checks, meaning that “I didn’t get paid for a month at a time. No benefits,” he said.
Rivera, 47, who left her Bronx home yesterday with her brother, City Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera, said of Pinela’s allegations: “I don’t know why anyone that was dear to me ever — it’s sad — that they would make allegations that are simply untrue.’’
Neither Naomi Rivera’s son nor Rubio could be reached for comment yesterday.
In an explosive set of allegations detailed in yesterday’s Post, Pinela had said that, shortly after they started dating, Rivera made him head of the BCED in 2006 even though he had no experience.
She proceeded to use the situation to her personal advantage — and the organization as a personal piggy bank, he charged.
Pinela, 40, said he got fed up and broke up with her.
Soon after, he said, three state grants that had already received tentative approval when submitted under one report were returned to his office. The official reason? They had to be submitted separately.
He resubmitted the paperwork, he said, but their processing continued to be jammed up.
“There was never a problem” with the way he had submitted requests in the past, he noted.
A frazzled Pinela told board members that his ex-lover had his agency “in a chokehold.”
Demands kept coming from her office to produce events in the neighborhood, Pinela told them, while the money was drying up.
Pinela called the state Assembly’s Human Resources Department to complain about Rivera in August 2009 but never heard back from it, he said.
He was sacked six months later.
Pinela filed a sexual-harassment and wrongful-termination complaint with the state against the council in July 2010 but lost because Rivera was not his direct employer and because he did not seek other funding sources to keep his agency afloat, according to the official ruling.
Rivera’s alleged antics left government watchdogs furious.
“This shows why public money should not be given out at the discretion or whim of any one legislator,” said Common Cause’s Susan Lerner.
The city Department of Education is already “looking into” a situation involving a full-time Brooklyn public-school gym teacher who caught Rivera’s eye and started working for her district office but never informed the city of the state gig.Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg, Kate Kowsh and Fredric U. Dicker