MTV's Catfish Investigates Manti Te'o/Lennay Kekua Fake Girlfriend Hoax

MTV's Catfish: The TV Show is investigating this week's bizarre NCAA scandal involving Notre Dame's Manti Te'o and his, seemingly, manufactured girlfriend Lennay Kekua, The Huffington Post reports. Te'o's tale of personal tragedy and athletic victory gripped college football fans this season. The Heisman runner-up's story was that he had learned of the death of his grandmother on the same day that his girlfriend, Kekua, died of leukemia.

The first was true, the latter, the cause of the controversy. It seems that there is no record of Kekua's death, more saliently, the woman in the photographs of Te'o's alleged "girlfriend" is not named Lennay Kekua, nor has she ever met the football player.

Nev Schulman, the host and executive producer of MTV's  Catfish: The TV Show is now looking into the finer points of the story. The docu-series was inspired by the 2010  film Catfish in which Nev Schulman saught to uncover the truth about a woman he had become involved in an online relationship with. The show is designed to investigate internet relationships in order to asses if one party is really who they claim to be.

It seems that Te'o, and his coaches, are claiming that he was the victim of a "catfish" and not the perpetrator of a ruse. A"catfish" is a person who has created a false online identity. Apparently these stories often end in the "fish" faking their own death.

Apparently Schulman has found two people who were aware of the hoax. He tweeted the following Thursday morning:

"Update: @jayRahz & @ceeweezy51 knew all along -- However this #Manti story ends, it doesn't change that we are all the victims of a #Catfish"

We will keep you updates as details on this strange story emerge.

Source : ign[dot]com