Manti Te’o fell victim to a shocking scam.
Manti Te’o never became a star. ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
The top talent in American football Manti Te’o fell into a Facebook prank ten years ago, the consequences of which are still visible in his life.
Te’o was supposed to become an NFL star player and a first-round pick, but he ended up being a healthcare worker and a very ordinary 32-year-old family man.
The boy on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine became a “joke the whole world knows” overnight, like Guardian formulates the matter.
So what happened?
In 2012, Te’o dropped a dark news bomb when he revealed that his grandmother and girlfriend had died on the same day.
At the time, the Hawaiian was still playing for Notre Dame’s successful varsity team, and the star player’s announcement garnered massive support across the country.
However, the tone quickly changed in the watch when it became clear that the “girlfriend” didn’t even exist.
Te’o had fallen in love with a woman named Lennay Kekua through Facebook, but had never met her in real life.
There was really cake Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a young man living in Seattle who later became a trans woman. He had made up Kekua’s identity in his head and used photos of his former classmate in the profile.
Tuiasosopon is said to have been a distant friend or family acquaintance of Te’o before he became a famous college athlete.
Te’o couldn’t guess that his “girlfriend” could be anything other than a real woman, because the fake friends and relatives on his Facebook profile looked real. In addition, Tuiasosopo was good at imitating a woman’s voice on the phone.
The truth was revealed
Te’o pictured after his career in 2022. ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
The relationship had continued for months until the truth began to dawn.
“Kekua” had claimed to Te’o that he had been in a car accident, during which he had been diagnosed with blood cancer. After hearing this, the NFL prospect slept with the phone line open, listening to his loved one’s breathing while he was in the “cancer ward”.
Later, with the help of other people, Tuiasosopo made Te’o believe that his girlfriend had died of cancer.
Te’o began to suspect what happened in December 2012, when “Kekua” called him and told him that he was alive. The athlete told his lawyer, who immediately assumed that the boy had been cheated.
After the truth dawned, a big uproar started in the United States about whether Te’o was a victim in the case or whether he himself was involved in the scam. Some suspected it was a publicity stunt.
In an even more inexplicable consequence, Te’o began to be suspected of being homosexual, and his Polynesian roots were implicated in why he fell for the scam.
Career ruined
The traumatic chain of events and the huge media attention it received also hindered Te’o’s NFL career. He tried seeing a therapist to clear his head, but it didn’t help.
– At university, the Yankee football field was my kingdom. No one could beat me there. I played free, fast and physical, Te’o said.
“Then I went to the NFL, and suddenly I questioned everything I was doing. Every day I just tried to get rid of the tension and the weird numb feeling. I tried by all means to reinvent myself.
Te’o’s NFL career eventually lasted seven seasons, but he never became the star player in the league that was expected of him as a youngster.
In 2022, a Netflix documentary was made about the hoax tapes Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.