Manti Te’o’s uncle knew Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was a “rat” from the moment he met him.
Alema Te’o slammed the alleged scammer saying he “needs to be prosecuted” in the first comments from the family after Tuiasosopo supposedly duped the Notre Dame linebacker by creating a fake girlfriend
“I know a liar when I’m around one, and [Tuiasosopo] was one,” Te’o said during a radio appearance on The Zone Sports Network on Thursday. “I smelled him as a bad rat from the get-go and I’m not afraid to come out and say that. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo is a liar, he concocted the whole thing. He’s been lying every step of the way.”
LA WOMAN ‘SHOCKED’ AFTER HER PHOTOS WERE USED IN TE’O GIRLFRIEND HOAX
Alema Te’o met Tuiasosopo before his nephew played against USC on Nov. 24 of last year and recalled how Tuiasosopo used his 9-year-old sister in the alleged scam.
Te’o claimed that during the meeting Tuiasosopo enlisted the help of the young girl to pose as a cousin of of the fictional Lennay Kekua while he was attempting to raise money for another imaginary friend of Kekua, also battling leukemia, who could not afford to go to Stanford.
“He brought this young girl,” Te’o said. “He said that this is the 9-year-old girl that he would speak to when he was in conversations with Lennay on the phone. This shows the character of this guy Ronaiah. He introduces her as a cousin and this girl is his little sister.
“The whole time Ronaiah is standing over her with two hands on her shoulders, almost guarding her, not letting her say a few things, not letting her speak for herself. She was used as a pawn.”
Alema Te’o believes that his nephew did actually meet a girl who was hired to pose as Kekua. Manti Te’o claimed to have met Kekua in person in the past.
“I can’t help but believe that was all part of it,” Te’o said. “I believe that it was an elaborate plan and he had a girl staged to be Lennay and [have Manti] see her out there and made arrangements for her to be out there. I wouldn’t put it past this guy to do that.”
Alema Te’o expressed regret at not calling out Tuiasosopo during their meeting last November after the latter claimed to have been involved in Steelers safety Troy Polamalu’s football camp. The elder Te’o has been running Polamalu’s football camp in American Samoa for a number of years now and claims that Tuiasosopo never had any involvement whatsoever.
“Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have blown that guy up then and there,” Te’o said.
Adding to the tangled timeline, Alema Te’o said his nephew received a phone call from Kekua’s number on Dec. 26 claiming that she was not actually dead and that the caller sent Manti a picture.
According to Notre Dame’s timeline of the events, Te’o received those phone calls on Dec. 6 and that’s when he began to suspect Kekua was a hoax. And it was on Dec. 26 that he alerted Notre Dame officals of his suspicions.
The star linebacker referenced Kekua four times after allegedly learning that his relationship was a hoax.
Te’o’s relationship with Kekua had been a major storyline throughout the college football season as Notre Dame compiled a 12-0 record, before losing to Alabama in the National Championship game and Te’o finished second in Heisman voting. The star linebacker had learned that Kekua, who was allegedly battling leukemia after a devastating car accident, died just hours after his beloved grandmother Annette Santiago passed away on Sept. 12.
Earlier this week Deadspin.com reported that Kekua never actually existed and that the entire situation was an elaborate hoax involving Te’o, Tuaisosopo and several other people.
Te’o’s uncle ripped Tuaisosopo for “stealing” the moment from his nephew and the family by compounding the tragedy that his grandmother had died and “killing off” Kekua on the same day.
“I can’t figure but think that this dude is absolutely sick to actually pull this right in the middle of another tragedy,” Te’o said. “[Manti’s father] Brian and the family, their efforts towards [Te’o’s grandmother] who passed away now start to shift toward, the attention goes to Manti and where he is at mentally.
“They don’t get the chance to grieve the mourning of his grandmother because of this information that comes about now about this so-called, the fictional girlfriend of [Manti’s] passing away. I feel that man, they stole that moment. This guy’s got some issues.”
Te’o’s uncle is the first family member to publicly speak since the scandal broke on Wednesday, and he framed the Butkus award winner as the victim.
“Manti is upset, he is not in a good place,” Te’o said of his nephew’s current mental state. “I feel bad that Manti was duped.”