Here’s an archived collection of tweets from people who knew it was fake.
Here’s a somewhat portrait of “the guy” referenced in the tweets working on someone else in November 2012; from TMZ. This time a little girl had lupus.
Which is exactly what happened here–although the woman whose picture was “stolen” didn’t find out about it until deadspin discovered it and asked her about it.
The “picture Kekua” and the “phone Kekua” appear to have been two different women. The picture Kekua appears to be (plausibly IMO) an innocent victim. The phone Kekua was of course in on the scam. I haven’t seen any leads yet on who she was but it’s hard to keep up with the flurry of stories.
Hmm - was going to go with he had to be in on it - until I saw that tweet - now that is probably fake - going back to had to be in on it.
Or the guy friend has to be a HUGE crazy stalker. Umkay took what - maybe 20 hours work or something? How much did this take? To fake being even someone fake girlfriend seems like a huge amount of effort - and since he talked to her - a girl.
The most logical explanation I can think of is covering up a passionate gay relationship. In the past - I have known closeted gays to take true elements of their REAL same sex partners and weave with an opposite sex persona. Seems like the car crash was real, but with his boyfriend.
Not sure how accurate gaydar is - but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that someone else’s gaydar flagged both guys as gay. Not that it means they were in a relationship of course.
Not into sports at all - and find this fascinating.
Its actually exactly what happened. While the person whose picture was used as “Lennay” didn’t know about her picture being used, but the person whose picture was used as her sister recognized herself on Twitter and accused the hoaxer of making Lennay up. That’s apparently what turned Deadspin onto the story in the first place.
Moral of story, if your going to make up a fake identity, use a picture of someone totally unrelated to you. The girl in question seemed to have been a fan (or gf?) of the hoxers football playing cousin.
Friends of Tuiasosopo and/or Tei, you have to think.
She’s mentioned on Deadspin and that TMZ story. The woman in the picture is Donna Tei, and I’m sure that’s who the Cardinals player met as well.
Your “logic” is little more than speculation and silliness. Do you have any evidence whatsoever for this “logic”?
Per the ND narrative/investigation, there’s multiple players. The girlfriend, her cousin, sister, friends and her parents (male and female in that group). Te’o and his family communicated (phone, text, email, twitter) with all of them.
Cite?
Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick Transcript. Jan 16, 2013
Simpler would have probably been a better word than logical.
Seems like this is either the worst friend ever - or something more than a “friend”:
Didn’t tell ND for 20 days when he “knew” it was hoax:
But if he was talking with her for hours and hours - it requires a girl as well as this “friend”. What is in it for her? A guy an a girl spending countless hours on a scam with no payoff that I can see.
Or covering up a gay relationship.
I think the other is the simpler - and more “logical” answer - although why they would go through all the extra trouble that his “friend” did in making up the sister doesn’t make a lot of sense either - if it was a gay relationship.
If my reasons are silly - so be it.
Nope. The Cardinals player met a tall athletic girl. Donna Tei does not appear to be either.
Still, we have the fact that some woman called him to tell him he wasn’t dead, and that that was the same woman he’d talked on the phone with before. It sure sounds like it’s supposed to be the girl in the picture in the BBC article.
The fact that no one knows how Manti and the hoaxer met suggests they might be closeted boyfriends to me. Sort of weird for two guys in their early twenties who lived in different States, never shard schools and don’t seemed to have had any friends in common till after they met to know each other. But there are plenty of social settings set up for closeted gay men to meet eachother with the specific purpose of the connection not being public.
If it was just a hoax perpetrated by Manti on the public, it seems sort of weird for him to hand most of the actual hoaxing over to a friend, though. If the hoax was to cover up a gay-relationship from his friends and family, it makes more sense to have the partner involved.
All I know is that the eventual movie for this is going to be a hell of a lot more fun then “Rudy”
Like Gangster Octopus, to me this is of little consequence but I can’t get enough of this.
So -Tuiasapopo is the ringleader here, right? He’s a USC fan, yes? So it is possible this is a huge scam designed to take in the face of ND football?
If so, it worked like a charm. Te’o bit, he fell in love with the fake girl, it became part of the media narrative and his Heisman campaign (which he came close to winning - you know the Heisman folks are breathing a huge sigh of relief that they don’t have to deal with any aspect of this). In the end, he’s caught in at least one lie (having met her after the Stanford game) and looks like a jackass.
I think this is less likely to be a beard situation with Te’o and Tuiasapopo. I think it’s much more likely that Te’o embellished the depth of the relationship, and quite frankly used it for his convenience (motivation, Heisman campaign, “good guy” reputation). It was probably a relief to him to learn that it was indeed fake because now he had an awesome narrative and sympathy-employing issue to deal with.
Where this went wrong, of course, was when the legend was set. He would always be remembered as the guy who had the heavy heart with his grandma and girlfriend dead on the same day. That would be a story during the Heisman campaign, the NC game, his being drafted, and his rookie season at least. At some point someone was going to start digging and find this out.
It also seems that at least some ND teammates were pretty sure she was fake and Te’o overstated the depth of the relationship…
Think that is a good point Hippy Hollow - perhaps I under estimate the lengths some fans will go to.
Either way - I can’t help feel bad for the guy - and think it’s nobody’s business, but I still want to know what happened
That would probably also be the wrong word. It’s not looking good for this theory. Te’o would have to be a huge troll or an attention whore to be in on this scam, and early on I thought this made sense. But if he were only covering up a gay relationship, killing off the girlfriend would be stupid and would defeat the entire purpose of the scam, which would be deflecting rumors about his sexuality. Concocting a fake long-distance relationship would make sense to the point that it’s a huge cliche; making up a girlfriend and then killing her doesn’t make much sense.
Because he was embarrassed, and why would he tell the school? It didn’t involve them.
What was in it for Tuiasosopo alone?
They “met” when “she” sent him a tweet after the Stanford game . The tweet said nice to have met you. Te’o replied back something to the effect of nice to have met you, too.
We don’t know anymore details than that. This was a scam from that first tweet. Met could mean so many things (they never did meet of course, but it could mean as a fan or something very brief he wouldn’t remember, but wouldn’t necessarily deny). He was a mark, it worked. If he doesn’t bite, move on.
re: lack of speaking to ND when he knew for so long. Again, from transcript linked above:
Why does anyone even care about this story? No laws were broken, nobody was scammed into giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars, there were no arrests, no injuries, one (possibly two) deaths. Aren’t there more important things to worry about than this? Am I missing something here?
The thing I see getting consistently overlooked is this part of the Deadspin article:
So many people insistent that this was something they cooked up together, when Tuiasosopo has in fact been doing this for 4 or 5 years. And has likely become very good at it.
More logical than ‘they concocted a gay cover up’ is that Tuiasosopo gets his kicks from doing this and this time caught his biggest fish. It was probably exhilarating.
By hoaxer I mean Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. It was he that ran the hoax, whether Manti was a confederate or the target. He took pictures from woman he knew to use as the face of the gf and her sister. Ronaiah seemed to have actually been friends with Te’o.
Its interesting and fun to speculate about. That its totally inconsequential to anything that matters is a feature, not a bug. Not all of us can (or want to) spend every minute of every day wrestling only with issues of cosmic significance