A man charged with shooting a security guard at the Waldorf-Astoria was under the thumb of a schemer who fed him cocaine and put him up to trying to rob a jewelry store at the hotel, a social worker involved in his defense said yesterday.

Rafael Rabinovich-Arda, 21, was merely “a follower” manipulated by a “puppet master” at the time of the brazen, November 2008 holdup attempt, Legal Aid Society social worker James Graves told a judge during a status update on the case. The purported ringleader wasn’t identified.

“It’s really unlikely that a fragile, dependent young man is capable of masterminding a theft of this proportion,” said Graves, who described Rabinovich-Arda as a lonely, depressed youth who began using drugs at 13.