Imagine your brother is Pedro Zamora, a national icon dedicated to battling AIDS prejudice. After he dies, everyone wants to raise funds in his name. Who to trust? One figure to steer clear of, at least according to Zamora’s sister, Mily, is Brian Quintana. Quintana, president of the Pedro Zamora Foundation, a nonprofit that does AIDS education among youth of color in Los Angeles, is a virtual tuning fork for bad vibes.

The poop on Quintana: He ran unsuccessfully for the California State Assembly in 1992. Three years later, he gave The National Enguirer an exclusive cover: “Stefanie Powers Forced Me to Make Love to Her.” After working as her assistant, Quintana charged the formed Hart to Hart star with sexual harassment. Since October 1996, Quintana himself has faced criminal charges for allegedly hitting a man with a brick and forcibly sodomizing him with his fist. (At presstime, the case had not been resolved.)

“Anytime someone enters public life, they inevitably incur enemies,” Quintana, 30, said in his defense. He also claimed to be a close friend of Mily, who in his eyes is the true victim. “She’s in therapy over this, literally.”

For her part, Mily scoffs at his purported concern, saying in a letter to The Los Angeles Times that Quintana was never authorized to speak for the Zamora family. “We asked Mr. Quintana to take Pedro’s name off the foundation, but he refused,” she said.