The Insane Phone Records From The Manti Te’o Hoax

Te’o supposedly talked to his fake girlfriend Lennay Kekua for more than 500 hours on the phone.

1. According to ESPN, Manti Te’o made and received a total of 1,000 calls from a 661 area code phone number, which supposedly belonged to his fake girlfriend Lennay Kekua.

Via: @SportsCenter

The records, which ESPN received from “a source” span from May 11th to September 12, the day Lennay Kekua “died.” The number is question is the one Te’o believed to be Lennay Kekua’s, and one that he called with shocking frequency. Te’o spent more than 500 hours on the phone talking to someone he believed to be Lennay Kekua, and a few of the phone calls were “several hundred minutes long.” That’s not an insignificant amount of time, and in fact suggests that if Te’o was entirely duped, the hoaxer put an extraordinary amount of effort into it. To put 500 hours into perspective, that’s 20 full days that Te’o spent on the phone with someone who didn’t exist.

Te’o’s interview with Katie Couric, in which he reportedly admits to lying about Kekua’s existence well after he learned she did not exist, airs tomorrow. Hopefully he will explain exactly who he was talking to for a good chunk of his life.