Update: One of the users from below has denied involvement in hoaxing Manti Te'o, pinning it on Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

Either Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o was tricked into believing he was in a long-distance relationship with a girl who died from leukemia (as he and Notre Dame claim and as one former Stanford opponent believes), or he invented said girl. Or something in between. And then there's the question of motive, either on his part or the part of his tricksters or both. And then there's the question of how this all slipped past sports media for so long. And then there are other questions raised by any answers we might be able to come up with at any point in there.

One possible place to start (ht @wyshynski):

Well looky here, a couple people who new Lennay was fake joking about it a month ago. twitter.com/jayRahz/status… — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

And here's them joking about running the fake Lennay account earlier this month twitter.com/jayRahz/status… — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

And here he is in early December outting Ronaiah Tuiasosopo twitter.com/jayRahz/status… — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

Hey, and here he is crediting Catfish as motivation twitter.com/jayRahz/status… — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

And here they are trying to contact the people from the Catfish doc about the scam topsy.com/twitter/catfis… — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

Here's another since deleted twitter account discussing the scam twicsy.com/i/ZkTSUc — Justin Megahan (@justinrmegahan) January 17, 2013

The two accounts in question, @jayRahz and @ceeweezy51, openly and repeatedly joked about hoaxing Te'o via the Lennay Kekua alias, at one point during the BCS National Championship.

Others appear to either have been in on it (or warm to the idea of looking like they'd been in on it), with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (named in Deadspin's story as "the man behind Lennay") mentioned frequently in their tweets, along with multiple references to Te'o being "Catfished," a la the film and TV series even Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick is now familiar with.

And then, from the day that the story broke:

My prayers go out to everybody that was affected or involved with this Lennay Kekua scandal. — jay.R (@jayRahz) January 17, 2013





Useful conclusions to be drawn from this right now are limited. It makes it easier to speculate that Te'o was actually duped, at least for a time. If this was indeed a hoax, the answer really might be just as simple as it seems:

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (@ronaiahhh) says to follow @iworship (Oct. '11). That account follows two people: @lennaykay and @mteo_5. — Ryan Hudson (@ry_hudson) January 17, 2013

Let's assume much more to come.