RONAIAH TUIASOSOPO Pal was woman’s classmate. (TMZ.com)
WHO, ME? Diane O’Meara (above) says she had no idea her photos were cut-and-pasted to become the imaginary “Lennay Kekua.”
WHO, ME? Diane O’Meara (above) says she had no idea her photos were cut-and-pasted to become the imaginary “Lennay Kekua.” (
)
Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s fake dead girlfriend was revealed yesterday to be an unwitting young California marketing exec, as the holes in the linebacker’s bizarre fauxmance story continued to grow.
Friends of Diane O’Meara, 23, said the LA-based woman found herself at the center of the scandal when her photo was taken from her Facebook page and used to depict Te’o’s fictitious gal pal, “Lennay Kekua,’’ on Twitter and other social-media sites.
“Somebody stole her identity,” a relative, Olga Volkov, told The Post. “[O’Meara’s family] found out about it yesterday. They were shocked,” Volkov said, noting that O’Meara is “a good person” from “a very good family.”
O’Meara is a former high-school classmate of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who is also a friend of Te’o and the purported mastermind of Te’o’s bogus romance.
Te’o’s romance with “Kekua’’ tugged at heartstrings: She survived a car crash, only to die of cancer as he led the Fighting Irish to an undefeated regular season.
But she didn’t exist.
An exhaustive investigation by Deadspin.com revealed that Te’o’s love story, including Kekua herself, was a massive hoax.
‘PROSECUTE THE RAT!’ UNCLE BREAKS SILENCE IN TE’O GIRLFRIEND HOAX
HOAX COULD HURT MANTI’S DRAFT STOCK
Te’o and Notre Dame officials have since claimed that the Heisman Trophy runner-up was the victim of a scam and that he only learned of the hoax Dec. 6.
But even that claim was tainted as new details emerged yesterday:
* The day after he supposedly learned his girlfriend was fake, Te’o still gave an interview about his grief over her death. He then continued to talk about his loss for several weeks.
* Te’o gave conflicting accounts of how he met Kekua, at one point saying they were introduced years ago by a cousin, and another time claiming it was after a Notre Dame-Stanford game.
He had since claimed that they never met in person at all.
* Te’o’s father, Brian, gave an interview this year claiming that Kekua had visited his son in his native Hawaii.
* Twitter activity shows that two users on the social-networking site joked about the fake romance as far back as early December, and even tweeted Te’o saying Kekua didn’t exist and indicating Tuiasosopo was involved in the hoax.
* Notre Dame classmates and football teammates speculated that Kekua never existed because they never saw her and he was flush with female companionship on the South Bend, Ind., campus.
“You know when any of your friends are with other girls,” said Notre Dame student and blogger Tyler Moorehead of CollegeSpun.com.
“There were plenty of girls around Manti. There was enough to make people on campus suspicious or question it.
“But he has such a great character and is so classy with teammates . . . there was no feeling you needed to doubt his word.”
Tuiasosopo is no stranger to sob stories. During an audition for NBC’s “The Voice,” he told producers that he had once been in a car wreck with his Christian rock band while going to a gig, but that everyone miraculously survived, US Weekly reported.
Te’o’s timeline of the relationship had been well-documented before the hoax was revealed — and it’s full of contradictions.
In a Sept. 23, 2012, interview with Sports Illustrated, he said he’d known Kekua for years and had dated her since Oct. 15, 2011.
Asked how he met Kekua, Te’o told SI, “We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular.”
“October 15 was the official date [that they became an item]. Of last year. I’ve know her for four years. So we’ve been friends. “
But in an Oct. 12, 2012, interview with the South Bend Tribune, Te’o’s dad said Kekua met his son after a 2009 game between Notre Dame and Stanford.
“They started out as just friends,” Brian Te’o said. “Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii, and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet her there.”
A teary-eyed Manti Te’o also talked about his doomed love in a Web interview Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11.
Meanwhile, former NFL player Reagan Mauia has insisted that Kekua exists and that he has spent time with her — after being introduced by Tuiasosopo.
Mauia, who played for the Arizona Cardinals, said he and Pittsburgh Steelers star Troy Polamalu went with Kekua on a community outreach trip to American Samoa in June 2011.
“This was before her and Manti,” Mauia told ESPN. “She and I became good friends. We would talk on and off . . . I am close to her family. She is real.”