Ronaiah Tuiasosopo explains why he had to end Manti Te’o ‘catfishing’ hoax to Dr. Phil [Video]
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Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was the jealous high school friend of Diane O’Meara. As an acquaintance of Manti Te’o and finally realizing that he loved the star Notre Dame linebacker, Tuiasosopo put together one of the most elaborate ‘catfishing’ hoaxes of all time.
It involved using O’Meara’s likeness to create a fake person named Lennay Kekua, whom Te’o fell in love with over the phone and on Twitter. After spending more than two years faking a girl’s voice to speak to Te’o, emailing, tweeting and everything else, Tuiasosopo had the fake Kekua killed off. Thus, Te’o spent his entire senior football season in South Bend believing his girlfriend had died.
On Friday, Tuiasosopo explained to Dr. Phil why he finally had to end the relationship with Manti — from the perspective of Ronaiah, not Lennay.
