Catfishing in America: Te’o’s story a cautionary tale for any social media user
Most Americans probably had never heard the term “catfishing” in January 2013, when news broke that Manti Te’o, star linebacker for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, had become a high-profile victim of the online scam. In fact, it was Te’o’s experience, which is the subject of a new Netflix documentary called “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” that brought catfishing into the national vernacular.
Catfishing is the act of assuming a fake identity online in order to deceive someone. In Te’o’s case, it was a California man, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who created an online persona as a woman, Lennay Kekua. Tuiasosopo, who now identifies as female, had taken a photo of a female high school classmate and used it to create Lennay’s Facebook account, adding the fake name and other fake biographical information. She even created fake online family members.
The documentary describes how Te’o met Lennay on social media. Several people in his own social circle had already met her online and vouched for her, so he felt it was safe to connect. Manti and Lennay eventually struck up a long-distance romance, with Tuiasosopo using an eerily convincing female voice in phone calls with the star football player. Even Te’o’s family was caught up in the ruse, letting their guard down in part, Te’o’s father explains, because Lennay shared their Polynesian heritage.
Along the way there were red flags, including the fact that Lennay was unwilling to meet Te’o face to face. Tuiasosopo explains how in previous online relationships with men interested in Lennay, she would end it once they asked to meet in person. When Te’o asked to see her via the video chat app Facetime she would make up an excuse such as that her phone wasn’t working or that they had a bad connection.
Then one day Tuiasosopo, posing as Lennay’s brother, called Te’o to tell him his girlfriend had been in a bad car accident and was on life support. As part of this fake story, Te’o was told Lennay was also diagnosed with leukemia. Lennay’s deteriorating health seems to have brought her and Te’o even closer together, but at least one of Te’o’s friends was suspicious. Teammate and close friend Robby Toma says in the documentary that by that point he was thinking Lennay must be “the most unlucky human of all time.” He tried Googling the car accident Lennay had supposedly been in and found nothing.
On September 12, 2012, at the start of Te’o’s senior season, his grandmother died. That same morning Lennay’s “brother” called to say she had died of leukemia. These twin tragedies were devastating for Te’o but created a made-for-TV storyline about the elite college athlete dedicating his final season to the two loves he’d lost. Te’o would lead Notre Dame to the national championship game and become a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, awarded each year to college football’s best player. Along the way he fielded endless media questions about what the season meant to him and how he was coping with the loss – on the same day! – of his grandmother and girlfriend.
And then it all came crashing down.
A Shocking Discovery, and a Failure of Fact-Checking
Two reporters from the sports website Deadspin, responding to an anonymous tip, began researching Lennay and found she was suspiciously non-existent on Google except for in news stories about her relationship with Te’o. They tried confirming she was enrolled at Stanford University but could not. They called funeral homes in her area, but none had a record of a funeral involving a woman named Lennay Kekua. They then used Google Image search and discovered that one of Lennay’s social media photos actually belonged to a California woman named Diane O’Meara, whom they eventually tracked down and who was unaware her picture had been used to catfish Te’o.
Deadspin’s report rocked the sports world and flipped the Te’o storyline, from one of triumph over tragedy to one of dishonesty and deception. Some questioned whether Te’o was in on the scheme, although there is no evidence he was. He would go on to play in the NFL, but by his own admission, the catfishing incident shook his confidence, and he was never the player many thought he would be.
The story was also a black eye for the sports media. Just as Te’o believed in a story that seemed too good to be true, so, too, did those covering college football, who repeated the dead girlfriend story ad nauseum without bothering to fact check. In fact, it was on Twitter that doubt about the story first surfaced, and it took an anonymous tip to bring it to Deadspin’s attention.
Te’o’s story serves as a stark reminder that even now, 10 years later, relationships conducted purely online are best viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Most of us are accustomed to spam emails and phone calls and have learned to tune out these more obvious methods of fraud. But, as Te’o himself admits in the documentary, part of what made him believe that Lennay was real was that other people he knew and trusted said she was, because they, too, had been catfished by her.
What Tuiasosopo pulled off in Te’o’s case might today be referred to as social hacking. Finding out personal information about a high-profile athlete like Te’o was the easy part. But the fact that she was “known” to his network of friends and relatives created a dynamic in which Te’o, a young man far from his native Hawaii and looking for a respite from his high-pressure lifestyle, became easy prey.
As investigators we often hear from clients trying to figure out if they can trust someone who has newly entered their life or the life of a family member, such as a new business or romantic partner. The fact that we hear from these clients at all usually means something about this new person seems “off,” and we step in to help determine if the client’s suspicions are valid – which they sometimes are. If the Manti Te’o story teaches us anything, it’s to proceed with great caution when communicating online with someone you’ve never met. Just as important is to not let red flags go uninvestigated.