Notre Dame's official response claimed that Manti came to them about this on December 26th. Yet, Manti was still answering questions about his GF all the way until the BCS Championship.
The guy who ran the Lennay and her sister accounts was a close friend of Teo's. So close that he was Teo's guest at the USC/ND game. Manti Teo has also since deleted all tweets aimed at Lennay's sister's twitter account.
As someone else put it:
The fact that he claims to have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours talking to this girl completely disproves the possibility that he was tricked. What fucking reason would ANYONE have to continue this for so long; it was a guy who created the girl persona (and a family friend on Manti, at that). It would be absolutely impossible to find some girl who spend countless hours on the phone with him - for what? There is no fucking logical explanation for the idea that this was an elaborate (understatement) hoax, perpetrated by his friend, with absolutely no motive, who found a girl who was willing to devout days and days on the phone pretending to be some girl.
Manti was obviously in on this, but that's no longer the question. The question is why this was done. Is he gay and (understandably) afraid to come out? Did he do this for the publicity?