Lotto Fever, Catch It

Main symptoms — blurred eyesight and/or hallucinations:

Vinny Vella was a millionaire — for a day, at least.

That’s $5 million, to be exact. But just like that, the lottery took it all away.

Vella thought he had two lucky sevens. But the lottery said one of the sevens was a 17.

Now the 61-year-old actor is depressed — and angry.

“I’m going to put the lawyers on it,” he says, his hoarse voice rising above its normal whisper. “Without a doubt. Without a doubt.”

. . .

Last Thursday, Vella bought a $500 Million Extravaganza lottery ticket on Mulberry Street, scratched off the numbers and thought he had two sevens — which would have made him a $5 million winner.

He went around telling everyone he was a millionaire.

Then came the fall.

On Friday, he took the ticket to a state lottery office, which said one of the sevens actually was a 17 — and to boot, it had the abbreviation “sevtn” written under the numeral.

Vella, who has his own cable access show, raised a fuss and yesterday a lottery employee drove the ticket up to lottery headquarters in Schenectady, where experts enlarged a picture of the ticket and found a faint “1” next to the 7.

They also checked the bar code and other security features on the ticket and determined it was not a winner.

That did not satisfy Vella at all, not at all.

“If it’s a misprint, it’s not my fault,” Vella fumed. “You know what I look like after telling everybody I won — I look like some big ass.”

Vella, who played Jimmy Petrille on “The Sopranos,” vowed to make this an issue on the TV show he hosts on Time Warner’s Channel 56. He also promised to carry protest signs in front of state lottery offices.

“I will do everything I can until these people are down on their knees,” he said.