Manti Te’o hoax: Alleged participant lived in Palmdale

Some of the key participants in the alleged Notre Dame star Manti Te’o-dead girlfriend hoax, have ties right here in the Southland.

Lennay Kekua, Te’o’s girlfriend, who apparently never existed, supposedly lived in Carson.

Deadspin.com, which broke the girlfriend hoax story, first became suspicious when they called several mortuaries in and around the Carson area and dicsovered none of them had heard of Kekua.

“We called all the mortuaries in Carson and they had no information,” said Deadspin.com editor Timothy Burke in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “This sort of really told us there’s something really weird going on here.”

The alleged mastermind behind the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, is a resident of Palmdale.

Te’o claims he never met Kekua and only communicated with her over the internet and phone and never video chatted.

“Over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online,” he said in a statement issued after the scandal broke.

However, according to CBS News, Brian Te’o, Manti’s father, told the South Bend Tribune that Kekua had visited Hawaii and the met with his son.

We will continue to keep track of this story as it develops.

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