A Dorchester man now faces at least 21 charges in three different courts for the way he allegedly used Facebook Marketplace to scam people out of deposit money on a room in his apartment in a three decker on Taft Street in Dorchester.

Bruno Vieira Ferreira, 23, faces at least 21 charges of larceny over $1,200 by false pretense, larceny under $1,200 by false pretense, forgery and uttering - deliberately cashing a bad check - in Boston Municipal, Dorchester and West Roxbury courts, according to court records.

According to the DA's office, Ferreira scammed at least six people out of deposits in January and February for a room in his apartment at 9 Taft St. that he had advertised on Facebook:

The payments, ranging from $450 to $1800, were made in cash or through Zelle, a peer-to-peer payment app. Ferreira collected $10,350 from potential tenants.

When the victims inquired about their scheduled move-in dates, Ferreira would give various excuses why they couldn’t move in, including saying that existing tenants hadn’t moved out so no space was available, or that family members of his had died and he couldn’t move out. Ferreira refused to refund any payments.

At around 8:30 a.m. on February 5, Boston police responded to 9 Taft Street for a call about a landlord-tenant dispute. Officers spoke to two men who stated they had signed and paid a $3,600 lease agreement for an apartment at the address. The men had encountered a resident at the address who told them he lived in the apartment for which they had signed a lease, and that no space was available. The resident said numerous other people had come to the home claiming to have paid deposits for the same apartment.

The resident told police that he believed that one of his roommates, later identified as Ferreira, had been advertising the room and scamming respondents.

Police were called to the same address on February 7 for a similar dispute. Officers spoke to a man who said he had paid a person, later identified as Ferreira, $1,350 for a room with a February 1 move-in date. The man told officers that Ferreira would not let him move in. While officers were talking to the victim, a different building resident approached and told them that he was aware of Ferreira’s scheme.

Detectives later entered the house and found a sign in the lobby that read: "Hello, if you are looking for a Bruno or have had money taken by him, we have no information either. There are multiple police reports on this case, and an eviction notice has been sent."

BPD detectives obtained a warrant for his arrest and tracked him to a new apartment on Exeter Street in the Back Bay, where they arrested him on Feb. 28.

A judge in one of the Dorchester cases initially set bail at $1,000, but Ferreira appealed to Suffolk Superior Court and he was released on personal recognizance, according to court records.

Innocent, etc.

Teddy Kokoros took in the Greek Independence Day parade down Boylston and Charles streets today.

Rob Adams reports northbound traffic on I-93 in New Hampshire earlier today was not too bad until he hit Concord and then, blammo.

Some Swan Boat sections made their way north on Pond Street by Jamaica Pond yesterday afternoon. The Swan Boats are scheduled to return to their leisurely tours of the Public Garden lagoon on Saturday.

Also headed north yesterday - but in Jamaica Pond - was one of the pond's muskrats, on the Parkman Drive side:

The Boston City Council this week formally accepted a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Education to develop a lesson plan for teaching students how to use open data sources - with a focus on the city's own Analyze Boston collection of public data sets on everything from crime reports and restaurant inspections to listings of city streetlights and data on where people are using parking meters.

These funds will be used to assist BPS teachers in designing a curriculum using Analyze Boston. DoIT [the city IT department] is also working with an organization, Data Science for Everyone, which introduces data science in elementary to high school classrooms to help shape the open data curriculum. This grant will also assist in funding a Project Manager to implement this program.

Councilor Henry Santana (at large), who chairs the council's education committee, said that although the program will initially be focused on high-school students, it could be extended to lower grades.

"It's a great way to encourage civic engagement," he said, adding that once the curriculum is finished, BPS will make it available for free so that educators in other districts can adapt it for their own needs.

The council voted unanimously to accept the grant.

The driver of an 18-wheeler got wedged but good in the Sumner Tunnel around 1 p.m. today, causing all sorts of delays and bringing all the news copters to video the blockage they couldn't see, because it was in a tunnel. It's the second time in a week or so that that's happened.

Nishan Bichajian photographed this man sometime between 1954 and 1959 as part of anMIT project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation called Perceptual Form of the City, focused on urban planning, in particular how individuals navigate large cities.

The same storefront in 2022:

Select Board Chairman Bernard Greene says the MBTA quickly responded to a town request to erase the "Zionist Pigs" and peace symbol somebody sprayed on at least one signboard at the Longwood Green Line stop yesterday.

Greene added:

We don’t know whether the perpetrators are from Brookline or out of town, as we have found other instigators of such activity to be. We continue to work with the Transit Police to investigate the incident.

Greene then continued with a statement - which he acknowledged is not an official one from the select board, which requires a posted meeting to make, but:

This incident requires an immediate statement, so I as Chair of the Select Board am issuing this message on my own behalf. I am confident that its sentiments are shared by the other members of the Select Board, Town staff, and indeed all members of our community.

I have always said that hatred is indivisible. This attack on our Jewish community is an attack on our community as a whole. Hate, in any form, is unacceptable.

Brookline has been a welcoming bastion of inclusion for our Jewish community members for over 100 years, as a home to multiple diverse congregations of numerous denominations. This vandalism, and any other attacks on the Jewish community’s safety and sense of belonging in this town, will not be tolerated.

The pernicious and false tropes of antisemitism are anathema to Brookline’s values. Whenever there are threats or instances of hate, our first responders are always ready to ensure the community’s safety and security.

He said that people who spot similar vandalism can use BrookOnline to report it. Anybody with info about the specific incident can contact Brookline Police at 617-730-2222.

A developer has proposed replacing an auto-repair garage and parking lot at 3458 Washington St., across Kenton Road from Hatoff's gas station in Jamaica Plain with a 37-unit, five-story apartment building.

About half the apartments in Adam Burns's proposal would be studios, with 15 one-bedroom units and 4 two-bedroom apartments. The ground floor would have commercial space.

Eight of the apartments would be rented as affordable.

The proposal calls for seven parking spaces.

Burns hopes to begin construction on the $8-millon project, just up the street from the Doyle's condo project, early next year, with completion targeted for the end of 2026.

Filings and meeting schedule.

The US Geological Survey reported a magnitude 4.8 earthquake in Lebanon, NJ at 10:23 a.m. and not long after, people across the Boston area began reporting a bit of shaking.

At 10:26, Handmaid in Jamaica Plain asked: "My apartment building just shook for a couple seconds. Anyone else feeling this in Boston???"

"Was messaging a co-worker on Slack who lives in NJ who said they were having an earthquake. Seconds later I felt it here in Boston," Darryl Houston reports.

"I felt in in Mission Hill!" JessO reports.

"Long, rolling quake - 20+ seconds in Winchester" Lori Magno reports.

"Felt it in South Boston - the chair I’m sitting in shook," LSR827 reports.

"Felt it in the South End," Johnmcboston reports.

"A coworker in Stow just felt his house shaking the same time as me in Watertown," Grahams reports.

Richard Smith reports from his Boston office: "My office chair started going back and forth for about 10 seconds. It felt different than an Amtrak train going by which vibrates my desk."

"Felt it for over a minute in Boston (North End), shaking sensation," Jessica Dello Russo reports.

"Felt it in West Roxbury. Felt like heavy machinery pounding the ground outside," Karl Seibert reports.

And yet, life went on: "Yup - and it still didn’t stop street cleaning here in Grove Hall," Chantelle617 reports.

Earlier:

In 2011, an earthquake in the Washington, DC area was felt up here as well. Some buildings were even evacuated, including 111 Devonshire St., after it was spotted leaning on a neighboring building - only it turned out it had always done that, it's just nobody noticed before.

Going further back, there was the Earthquake of 1755, which toppled the grasshopper at the top of Faneuil Hall.

GBH reports on a City Council hearing on the state's and Boston Medical Center's proposal to rebuild the Shattuck Hospital site into the nation's largest substance-abuse-recovery campus.

Watch the hearing:

What's now a little used alley across Tremont Street from Lagrange Street (so obscure the Google Street Views car has never been down it) was once an entrance to a nightclub that was part of a restaurant complex where Boston's elite would meet to greet and eat - and until 3 a.m., if you can imagine.

The Schneider brothers, Joseph and Max, opened Steuben's 114 Boylston St., in 1932, after emigrating from Vienna - by way of New York.

Their new place featured what was then Boston's longest soda bar. After Prohibition was repealed the next year, Steuben's became one of the first restaurants in the city to win a liquor license - they kept the bar, but changed the beverages offered at it.

Their space stretched to Van Rensselaer Place, an alley they shared with three theaters off Tremont Street.

Eventually, they expanded Steuben's to include five separate rooms, including Club Midnight - open until 3 a.m. - and the Cave, which opened in 1942. At first, the Cave described itself as "Boston's Gayest Night Spot - in the earlier sense of the word - but eventually it became "Boston's only authentic Latin-American room," featuring Jack Fisher's Latin Band and weekly "Cha-Cha-Cha Jamborees."

In addition to Van Rensselaer Place, patrons could also get their cha-cha-cha on via an entrance on Boylston Place.

Steuben's and the Cave continued on through the 1960s and the advent of the Combat Zone. Steuben's closed sometime between April, 1966, when it took out its last help-wanted ad in the Globe, and 1968, when the Boston Licensing Board - one of whose members was Dapper O'Neil - approved a license for a new place called the Sugar Shack.

On April 22, 1965, meanwhile, the city officially renamed Van Rensselaer Place as Allen's Alley to honor Cambridge native (but Boston Public Library regular) Fred Allen, who had a regular segment on his radio about life on Allen's Alley in a fictional small town.

In addition to Steuben's, Max Schneider also operated restaurants at Suffolk Downs and at a track in Lincoln, RI - where he died of a heart attack in 1975. Joseph died in 1986.

The Steuben's name lives on - in Denver, where Max and Joseph's grand-nephew, Josh Wolkon, runs a restaurant with that name in honor of "the center of the Boston dining and nightlife scene" his uncles created.

Nishan Bichajian took the photo of the Cave's entrance sometime between 1955 and 1959 as part of a five-year MIT project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation called Perceptual Form of the City, focused on urban planning, in particular how individuals navigate large cities (photo posted under this Creative Commons license).

The Revere Journal reports that the city public-health director said last week a resident had been diagnosed with brucellosis, a bacterial infection more commonly seen in farm animals, but which people can get by drinking unpasteurized milk. She urged residents to be aware that's a risk of drinking the stuff.

CommonWealth Beacon reports on the ruling involving the Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center on Fisher Avenue, whose current owners want to close it by July 1.

A woman suffered possibly life-threatening injuries when hit by a large box truck at Essex Street and Atlantic Avenue around 6:30 a.m. The truck driver remained at the scene.

Teddy Kokoros recorded the aftermath of a mighty wind at the JFK/UMass T stop this morning.

Damien Drella reports that high winds caused the partial collapse of a four-story section of an apartment building under construction at 860 Broadway in Saugus. All workers accounted for.

John Hanzl came across a bowled-over tree at Harrison Avenue and East Dedham Street in the South End:

Phil R. shows us the huge tree limb that plunged to the pavement on Roosevelt Road in Newton, adds, "Good thing this didn't happen during school rush hours."

As of 9:45 a.m., Eversource was reporting 525 businesses and homes without power in Boston.

A National Park Service/Coast Guard camera on Boston Light, where the ocean meets Boston Harbor, recorded the sea's ragin' glory at 6:24 a.m.

Photo via Boston Timelapse, which reposts photos from Boston Light, Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights every hour.