A Complete Timeline of the Manti Te’o Catfish Controversy: From First Meeting to Public Scandal

usmagazine.com:

A new side to the story. In the fall of 2012, Manti Te’o was one of the most famous and talented college football players in the country, but by the winter, he was the target of cruel jokes.Te’o, who played for Notre Dame at the time, revealed after a September 2012 game against Michigan State that he had lost both his grandmother and his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, on the same day.

He dedicated his season to their memory, even skipping Kekua’s funeral because she insisted that he didn’t miss a single game of his senior season. “[She] made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play,” he told the Los Angeles Times in December 2012. “All she wanted was some white roses.

So I sent her roses and sent her two picks along with that.”Though his story of persevering through heartbreak and grief earned Te’o national attention, the story got even bigger in January 2013, when Deadspin reported that Kekua was not a real person. “Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper,” the outlet stated at the time. “There is no record of her birth in the news.

Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.”In their article, Deadspin claimed that the fake Facebook account was created by Naya Tuiasosopo.