This is one of the strangest stories of the year. Yes, we're not even three weeks into the year, but while the celebrity world sure can throw some bizarre gems into the laps of journalists, unless Lindsay Lohan marries and divorces a killer whale, this one will be tough to beat. 

Star college football player Manti Te'o spoke late last year of the death of his grandmother and beloved girlfriend on the same day. He spoke later about how they met, how much time they spent together and how much he loved her. Then... it turned out she was completely fake. 

First off everyone just thought he had been lying for some really, really strange reason, but as the snoops got to work, it has turned out that Te'o was being completely duped by someone online. Despite claiming that he loved her, he had actually never met her. It originally all came out as Te'o had received a call from a number he thought was his girlfriend, but after her alleged death. ESPN has now reported that a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo had been behind the hoax. They say that he had confessed to a female friend, who eventually came forward to confess on his behalf.

"He (Ronaiah) told me that Manti was not involved at all, he was a victim. ... The girlfriend was a lie, the accident was a lie, the leukemia was a lie," said the woman. "He was crying, he was literally crying, he's like 'I know, I know what I have to do.'" What may be worse is that Manti is not the only victim of Tuiasosopo's hoaxes. She says: "It's not only Manti, but he was telling me that it's a lot of other people they had done this to."

Help is on the way for Manti, as the man behind the acclaimed and controversial documentary Catfish, Nev Schulman, has tweeted him, saying he wants to help: