Catfish: Story of Notre Dame's Linebacker Manti Te'o Fake Internet Girlfriend A Hoax! (A Girlfriend He Thought Was Real But Who Never Existed)

" Notre Dame says a story about Manti Te'o's girlfriend dying, which he said inspired him to play better as he helped the Fighting Irish get to the Discover BCS National Championship, turned out to be a hoax apparently perpetrated against the linebacker.

“
To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.
”
-- Manti Te'o statement
The university issued a news release Wednesday after Deadspin.com reported it could find no record of Lennay Kekua existing.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said in a news conference Wednesday night that coaches were informed by Te'o and his parents on Dec. 26 that Te'o had been the victim of what appeared to be a hoax. Someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself" with Te'o, the school said, then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had died of leukemia.

"On the morning of Dec. 26, very early morning, Manti called his coaches to inform them that while he was in attendance at the ESPN awards show in Orlando, he received a phone call from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Lennay Kekua," Swarbrick said. "When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine."" - ESPN