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Woman whose photo was used in Te’o hoax: Tuiasosopo apologized, confessed

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In a photo provided by ESPN, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te\'o pauses during an interview with ESPN\'s Jeremy Schaap, right, on Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, in Bradenton, Fla. ESPN says Te\'o maintains he was never involved in creating the dead girlfriend hoax. He said in the off-camera interview: "When they hear the facts they\'ll know. They\'ll know there is no way I could be a part of this." (AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan Jones) MANDATORY

NEW YORK, N.Y. – The woman whose photo was used as the “face” of the Twitter account of Manti Te’o’s supposed girlfriend says the man allegedly behind the hoax confessed and apologized to her.

Diane O’Meara spoke to NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday. She says Ronaiah Tuiasosopo used pictures of her without her knowledge in creating a fake woman called Lennay Kekua. Te’o asserts he was tricked into an online romance with Kekua and, until last week, believed she died of leukemia in September.

O’Meara went to high school with Tuiasosopo, but she says they’re not close. She says he called to apologize Jan. 16, the day Deadspin.com broke the hoax story, but “I don’t think there’s anything he could say to me that would fix this.”

The 23-year-old O’Meara is a marketing executive in Los Angeles. She says that for five years, Tuiasosopo “has literally been stalking my Facebook and stealing my photos.”

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