Manti Te'o: Arizona Cardinals, Reagan Mauia Says Dead Girlfriend Lennay Kekua "Is Real"

Notre Dame athlete Manti Te'o was a victim of a hoax says the university's athletic director Jack Swarbrick. The linebacker's leukemia stricken girlfriend, Lennay Kekua never existed and the linebacker is a victim of "someone's sick jokes and constant lies," he and Notre Dame said in a statement. However now people are digging deep into the drama and Swarbrick may have been misinformed.

Te'o may have met Kekua in person doing charity work in American Samoa with Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Troy Polamalu in June 2011. Arizona Cardinals, Reagan Mauia confirmed that Kekua does exist and that he has met her, "This was before her and Manti," Mauia said Wednesday evening. "I don't think Manti was even in the picture, but she and I became good friends. We would talk off and on, just checking up on each other kind of thing. I am close to her family. When she was going through the loss of her father, I was... I offered a comforting shoulder and just someone to bounce her emotions off. That was just from meeting her in Samoa."

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"She was tall," he said. "Volleyball-type of physique. She was athletic, tall, beautiful. Long hair. Polynesian. She looked like a model ... "

He said it is his understanding that Kekua's mother is operating her Twitter account. He said he'd never met her mother. When told by a reporter that she apparently might not have existed, Mauia said: "No, she is real."

Swarbrick had met with Te'o and trusts him, "I want to stress, as someone who has been engaged in this as anyone the past couple weeks, that nothing I have learned has shaken my faith in Manti Te'o one iota," Swarbrick said. "The same great young man, great student and great athlete that we have been so proud to have as a member of our family is the same guy tonight, unchanged in any way except for, as he indicated in the statement, his release, the embarrassment of being a victim in this case."

 Because of his kind and open personality, he was an easy target for the hoax, Swarbrick said, "In many ways, Manti was the perfect mark, because he is a guy who is so willing to believe in others and so ready to help, that as this hoax played out in a way that called upon those tendencies of Manti, it roped him more and more into the trap," Swarbrick added, "He was not a person who would have a second thought about offering his assistance and help."

On December 6, Te'o received an unnerving phone call from the number Kekua used when she was alive and when he answered it realized it was her voice, he was shocked.  After the phone call the woman tried to restart the relationship. During the holidays Te'o called Notre Dame's coach and told him the news.

The university hired investigators to look into the exclusively online relationship. Te'o may talk to the public about the incident, but Swarbrick says, "At the end of the day, this is Manti's story to tell and we believe he should have a right to tell it, which he is going to do."

The hoax may be unfortunate, but people are suspecting that Te'o is lying.  ESPN showed a clip of a interview of Te'o from October 2, 2012 in which he insinuated that he met her, "I'd seen the most beautiful girl I ever met, not because of her physical beauty but the beauty of her character and who she is," Te'o said in the ESPN interview. "Even though she was fighting leukemia and fighting various things, she always found time to serve someone else."