the MIT Blackjack Team was "founded ... in the 1980s" is in dispute. An article in The Tech, January 16, 1980, suggests that Roger Demaree and JP Massar were already running the team and teaching a hundred MIT students to play blackjack by the third week of the 1980s, implying that the team had been founded in the late 1970s, before Kaplan joined, although Demaree and Massar have mostly avoided publicity. Controversy Boston Magazine and Boston Globe articles In its March 2008 edition, Boston magazine ran an article investigating long-lingering claims that the book was substantially fictional. The Boston Globe followed up with a more detailed story on April 6, 2008. Though published as a factual account and originally categorized under "Current Events" in the hardcover Free Press edition, Bringing Down the House "is not a work of 'nonfiction' in any meaningful sense of the word," according to Globe reporter Drake Bennett. Mezrich not only exaggerated freely, according to sources for both articles, but invented whole parts of the story, including some pivotal events in the book that never happened to anyone. Disclaimer and leeway The book contains the following disclaimer: The names of many of the characters and locations in this book have been changed, as they have certain physical characteristics and other descriptive details. Some events and characters are also composites of several individual events or persons. This disclaimer allows broad leeway to take actual events and real people and alter them in any way the author sees fit. But Mezrich went further, in both articles say. Historical inaccuracies The following events described in Bringing Down the House did not occur: Underground Chinatown Casino. The underground casino used for Kevin's final test (pp. 55–59) is entirely imaginary, according to Mike Aponte and Dave Irvine. Use of Strippers to Cash Out Chips. Also according to Aponte and Irvine, strippers were never recruited to cash out the team's chips, as described on pp. 149–153. Shadowy Investors. The "shadowy investors" first referenced on p. 3 are a major source of intrigue for Mezrich's story, but did not exist, according to Aponte and Irvine. The investors in the team included the players, one of Kaplan's college roommates, a few of Kaplan's Harvard Business School section mates, and Kaplan's friends and family members. Physical Assault. The scene in which Fisher is beaten up (pp. 221–225) is imaginary. "No one was ever beaten up,"