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.

Merely Show Me You Have Money!

OK, it’s there:

It wasn’t the most cerebral bank robbery scheme ever hatched — a homeless man with a knapsack in his hands walked into a Richmond County Savings Bank branch in Eltingville Tuesday morning and shouted, “Give me the money!”

And when the bank employees wouldn’t give him anything, cops say he left.

Police caught up with the suspect, 35-year-old Yamil Almedina-Torres, minutes later, just down the block from the 4523 Amboy Rd. branch.

And yes, that counts as attempted robbery:

When they searched him, he had a small baggie of pot on his person, cops allege.

Almedina-Torres, who gave Project Hospitality’s Homeless Drop In Center on Central Avenue in St. George as his address, was charged with third-degree attempted robbery and unlawful possession of marijuana.

Maybe Congestion Pricing Will Help

Very manly on the part of the one driver who backed down — and called the police! — once he saw he was outmatched:

Two angry drivers drew a knife and a machete in a confrontation with each other in traffic near the entrance of the Holland Tunnel in New Jersey yesterday morning, officials said.

A Port Authority spokesman, Steve Coleman, said one driver cut off the other driver under the covered roadway on Route 139.

The driver who was cut off jumped out of his car with a small knife, halting traffic, Mr. Coleman said.

In response, the other driver also stopped and pulled out “a large machete.”

Then, “the guy with the small knife, realizing he was no match for the machete, called the police,” Mr. Coleman said.

Up, Up And Away

Wagons, circling:

If Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials sound even more defensive than usual in discussing last week’s lethal crane collapse, it might have to do with an overlooked fact about the catastrophe site: The city owns it. And while it would be unfair to say the city has blood on its hands, it was the city itself that set the building project in motion.

In 2004, the city’s Educational Construction Fund — an agency controlled by the mayor — leased the land to the DeMatteis Organization and the Mattone Group.

The luxury condo building going up at the site will also include the new, 520-seat Middle School 114. The developers will pay for both the $40 million school and the $103 million apartment building.

. . .

The ECF was set up by the state legislature in the 1960s to promote New York City school development but had largely fallen inactive until Bloomberg took office. In 2005, ECF executive director Jamie Smarr told The Post the mayor’s capital plan encouraged the agency to “aggressively leverage the system’s air rights.”

What Happens In Vegas Gets Waylaid In Vegas

Things constituents don’t want to hear after learning you were the only council member absent for the most important vote of the session include “I was in Vegas.” But for the record, it was opening day as well:

It was perhaps the most important vote of the year for the City Council.

For hours at City Hall on Monday, council members — who have provided little resistance to the mayor’s initiatives in recent years — debated whether to back Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to charge fees to drive in Manhattan below 60th Street.

The measure could not advance to Albany without the Council’s approval, and the behind-the-scenes lobbying was furious.

In the chamber, one council member quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt; another quoted the Who guitarist Pete Townshend. Several council members from other boroughs rose to oppose the plan, saying the measure would unfairly burden residents from poorer areas beyond Manhattan. But one council member could not be found.

Councilwoman Helen Diane Foster, a Bronx Democrat who has one of the worst attendance records on the council, was not at City Hall. She was not in her district. And her staff could provide no explanation for her whereabouts when voting began.

Reached by cellphone on Tuesday, Ms. Foster said that she had intended to be there, but was unavoidably delayed “on the West Coast.”

After some prodding, she hesitantly acknowledged that she had been in Las Vegas, where, she said, a family member received a community service award on Saturday night.

“Nobody’s more disappointed than me, because I am so against congestion pricing,” Ms. Foster said on Tuesday.