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Holy Cow - Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend is a HOAX

The Smoking Gun -- Manti Te'o Is A Rube, Not A Hoax Coconspirator

"Proof of life" Twitter photos key to bizarre scam

JANUARY 18--While Manti Te’o did himself no favors by hitting the mattresses in the wake of this week’s Deadspin report, there is compelling evidence--at least to TSG’s eyes--that the Notre Dame star was the victim of the remarkable hoax and not a coconspirator.

In a story packed with bizarre details and inexplicable behavior, it is key to focus on the actions last month of Te’o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the 22-year-old California man who invented “Lennay Kekua,” the fictitious woman with whom Te’o, 21, maintained an online romance/relationship. Until, of course, “Kekua” died last September of leukemia.

As part of the “Kekua” hoax, Tuiasosopo established a Twitter account for the fake woman. The account, which has carried several different names since its inception in 2011, was most recently @LoveMSMK (until it was deleted earlier this month).

As Deadspin reported, the account included several Twitpics purporting to show "Kekua," an attractive brunette who appeared to be in her early 20s (one Te’o tweet indicated that she turned 22 last February 14, Valentine’s Day).

But the “Kekua” photos were actually images that had been taken from the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Diane O’Meara, a 23-year-old Los Angeles marketing executive. When interviewed by Deadspin, O’Meara identified Tuiasosopo as a former high school classmate whom she remembered fondly, but had not been in touch with since graduation.

Until last month.

Tuiasosopo, O’Meara recalled, contacted her on Facebook with a strange request. As Deadspin reported, Tuiasosopo claimed that his cousin “had been in a serious car accident, and he had seen her photos before and thought she was pretty. Would she be so kind as to take a picture of herself holding up a sign reading ‘MSMK,’ to put in a slideshow to support the cousin's recovery?”

Though puzzled by the request, O’Meara agreed and sent Tuiasosopo a photo showing herself holding a white piece of paper with the handwritten letters “MSMK” (the meaning of which O’Meara had no clue). As seen below, the photo of O’Meara with the sign was subsequently uploaded last month to the @LoveMSMK Twitter account’s profile. Te'o last September told Sports Illustrated that “Kekua”’s first name was actually Melelengei, so perhaps “MSMK” is a reference to her initials. [It is.]

The addition of the photograph was not a random act on the part of Tuiasosopo, but rather a clear attempt by the hoax’s mastermind to establish “proof of life” for “Kekua,” who had purportedly died three months earlier.
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If Te’o was somehow involved in the hoax, there would have been no need for Tuiasosopo to scheme to obtain a fresh photo of O’Meara. Or to upload that December image to the “Kekua” Twitter account. He did it simply in a bid to further bamboozle the stunningly naïve Te’o.
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http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/manti-teo-rube-984703
 
@jamiemottram: Te'o's mom tried to convert his fake GF to Mormonism via text. usat.ly/YhQfyV
 
Don't have a link, the conspirator claims to have also faked using a female voice and it was him that Te'o had been talking to.

Please let Te'o be gay. It's the only thing that makes any sense at this point.

Otherwise - W. T. F.?
 
Yankee_In_TX said:
Don't have a link, the conspirator claims to have also faked using a female voice and it was him that Te'o had been talking to.

Please let Te'o be gay. It's the only thing that makes any sense at this point.

Otherwise - W. T. F.?
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He's gay.

It's how they are going to explain roniah's phone number being all on teo's phone log.

They are lovers. Roniah is taking the fall for Teo.
 
This is just so damn weird.

Manti Te'o was talking to man

The woman whose picture was used to create Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend has been identified, but the voice of the woman who had hours of late-night phone calls with the Notre Dame star linebacker has remained silent. Turns out that's because it reportedly was a man.

The lawyer for the man who has been identified as behind the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, told the New York Daily News that his client disguised his voice and assumed the identity of Lennay Kekua to try to develop a relationship with Te'o.

Milton Grimes said that Te'o "thought it was a female he was talking with. It was Ronaiah as Lennay."

Grimes said that Tuiasosopo wasn't trying to hurt Te'o.

"This wasn't a prank to make fun," Grimes said, according to the newspaper. "It was establishing a communication with someone. ... It was a person with a troubled existence trying to reach out and communicate and have a relationship."

Grimes wouldn't characterize the type of relationship Tuiasosopo wanted with the Heisman Trophy runner-up.

"I wouldn't describe his issues at this time," he said to the Daily News.

How could he get away with it, though? Tuiasosopo, 22, has had dramatic training, plays in a Christian band and even auditioned last year for the television show "The Voice."

"Come on, Hollywood does it all the time," Grimes said of his client pretending to be a woman. "People can do that."

The ruse apparently worked for many, many hours on the phone. A source close to Te'o gave ESPN's Jeremy Schaap documents that the source says are Te'o's AT&T phone records from May 11 to Sept. 12, the date that Kekua was supposed to have died of leukemia. The logs are not originals, but spreadsheets sent via emails, and could not be independently verified.

The records show that in that four-month span -- when Te'o has said he believed Kekua to be in a Los Angeles hospital recovering from an accident and being treated for cancer -- Te'o made and received more than 1,000 calls totaling more than 500 hours in length from the same number in the 661 area code. The 661 area code covers Lancaster, Calif., which is part of Los Angeles County. The source told Schaap that Te'o believed the 661 phone number in question was Kekua's.
Of these calls, 110 were more than 60 minutes in length, including several that were several hundred minutes long. In an ESPN interview Friday, and in interviews with both ESPN and Sports Illustrated last fall, Te'o said he was on the phone "every single night" with a person he believed to be Kekua, often for long stretches late at night.

...
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http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8875990/lawyer-ronaiah-tuiasosopo-was-voice-talking-manti-teo
 
I'm sorry, until T'eo actually comes completely clean I'm not buying half this stuff. Why are people like Couric and others neglecting to ask him about the "first meeting" at Stanford and the meeting in Hawaii. We already know they didn't happen. We also know that the newspaper reports...which were widespread..explained these meetings in detail. It was later reported that the details came from his Dad. So where did his Dad get those details? And Manti knew those articles and facts were circulating for the whole season since "her death" in Week 4 so why not correct it then. "That's not how we met, it was an online thing." So he basically let that lie ride for a full season...months. Then he lets it go some more after he finds out it wasn't real. I just think there are many hidden lies and I refuse to call the guy a victim.
 
Add some more suspicion to the story:

Inexplicably, Notre Dame didn’t ask linebacker Manti Te’o to produce cell phone records corroborating the contention that he spent countless hours on the phone with his fake deal girlfriend.

There likewise had been no mention of objective proof of extensive and lengthy calls in any of the reporting from ESPN.

Now, ESPN reports that a “source close to Te’o” has produced the cell phone records. Sort of.

While the online story isn’t clear, Mike Hill of SportsCenter has explained that the source didn’t produce the actual phone records but spreadsheets based on the raw data. The spreadsheets show that, from May 11 through September 12, Te’o made more than 1,000 calls to a number in the 661 area code, where Lennay Kekua supposedly lived. Of the calls, 110 lasted for more than 60 minutes.

That’s fine, but it’s meaningless without the actual records. Te’o has claimed that he spent long stretches overnight on the phone with Kekua while she slept in a hospital bed. It doesn’t matter if there are 110 calls of more than an hour in length if there isn’t a single one that lasted, say, six hours. The report from ESPN doesn’t say whether the spreadsheet sheds light on that point.

Put simply, producing anything other than the actual records serves only to raise more suspicions in a case that already has plenty of them.

The only way out of this latest maze created by Te’o's camp is to produce the records
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/23/teo-produces-spreadsheet-of-cell-phone-records/
 
Señor Stan;2115796 said:
That was creepy.
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Yeah, that creepy factor is about at a 12 right about now. This whole story just keeps taking some strange turns. Now come to find out Manti has been talking to a man this whole time on the phone? Just wow!
 
You guys spending any time on speculating where Manti Te'o puts his penis in this is kind of disturbing.
 
The guy behind this whole scheme is an absolute psycho.

Who spends 1000's of hours talking to a dude impersonating a girlfriend going through chemotherapy? This guy must have some serious mental issues....

:facepalm:
 
I just listened to part of the interview and I believe he's being upfront now. Ed Lover was on First Take yesterday and I think he nailed things perfectly. The kid just lacks street sense or as he called it "swag". I was raised that if you know that 1+1=2 then don't try make it equal 4. Most people with common sense would have been able to snuff this out in about a week. Somehow it took him an eternity, but I am starting to feel bad for him. He just needs to go away now and sooner or later people will forget about this. He'll be the butt of many jokes for his whole career, but its a lesson I'm sure he'll never forget.
 
Dr. Phil: Tuiasosopo 'romantically in love' with Te'o

In an excerpt of his two-part interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, Dr. Phil McGraw said the alleged mastermind behind the Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax spoke of his "confused" sexual identity, and that Tuiasosopo "fell deeply, romantically in love" with the Notre Dame star.

"I asked him, straight up, was this a romantic relationship with you?" McGraw told NBC's Matt Taibbi during a segment on NBC's Today. "And he says, 'yes.' I then said, are you then, therefore, gay? He says, 'Well, when you put it that way, yes.' And then, he caught himself and said, 'I am confused.'"
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In the course of the interview, Tuiasosopo told McGraw that Te'o had absolutely no role in the hoax, painting the All-American as an innocent victim in a scam that Tuiasosopo knew would blow up once Te'o's stature grew over the course of his senior season.
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Stemp said:
So basically, Te'o was involved in a gay relationship but just didn't know it.
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I think it's an excuse to evade responsibility. If this Ronaiah Tuiasosopo "loved" Manti so much, why did he torture him by telling him his "girl" had died? Why do so much to destroy the reputation & career of the football player you "love"? Why set him up for public ridicule if you "love" him so much?

What "love" is it to spends hours upon hours on the phone & through texts with Manti's parents discussing their religion, then allow Te'o's mother to spend so much time witnessing & giving her testimony in an attempt to help the "girl" find God?

I call b.s., this guy's evading responsibility.
 
Playoffs said:
I think it's an excuse to evade responsibility. If this Ronaiah Tuiasosopo "loved" Manti so much, why did he torture him by telling him his "girl" had died? Why do so much to destroy the reputation & career of the football player you "love"? Why set him up for public ridicule if you "love" him so much?

What "love" is it to spends hours upon hours on the phone & through texts with Manti's parents discussing their religion, then allow Te'o's mother to spend so much time witnessing & giving her testimony in an attempt to help the "girl" find God?

I call b.s., this guy's evading responsibility.
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Have you ever seen catfish?
 
b0ng said:
You guys spending any time on speculating where Manti Te'o puts his penis in this is kind of disturbing.
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:hobie:
cuYAp.gif
:hobie:
 
Well, turns out Roniah T was the voice on the voicemails, or at least that's what Dr. Phil's show will confirm this week. Video at the link so you can see him behind the screen. I'm still sticking with my gut feeling that these two are in love together, and the girl persona is just a cover.

Here’s Manti Te’o Hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo Performing What He Claims Is Lennay Kekua’s Voice
Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey
When the first part of Dr. Phil's exclusive interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo concluded yesterday, we were left with a cliffhanger: would Ronaiah finally give in to the good Doctor's demands and perform the voice of Lennay Kekua? Today we got the answer: sort of.
After an inconclusive performance behind a privacy screen, Dr. Phil set up a scenario for Ronaiah to perform the Lennay character from the Tuiasosopo home on a clean phone with a producer serving as witness.

...
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http://deadspin.com/5980822/heres-ronaiah-tuiasosopo-attempting-to-perform-what-he-claims-is-lennays-voice-on-dr-phil
 
They played a clip on the radio and it sounds like guy trying to sound like a girl or a big hideous woman.

The voice definitely doesn't match the womans picture that Teo "thought he was talking to".
 
I think this hoax has opened the door for some heretofore suppressed homo-erotic fantasizing about college football players. :peek:
 
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