The wrenching story of Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o's girlfriend dying of leukemia - a loss he said inspired him to play his best all the way to the BCS championship - was dismissed by the school as a hoax perpetrated against the linebacker. Notre Dame said Wednesday night it believes Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a woman whose "death" was then faked by the perpetrators of the hoax. The school made the statement following a lengthy story by Deadspin.com, saying it could find no record that Lennay Kekua ever existed. "This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said in a statement. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.  However, he stopped short of saying he had ever met her in person or correcting reports that said he had, though he did on numerous occasions talk about how special the relationship was to him. "To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," he said. In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a news conference that Te'o told coaches on Dec. 26 he had received a call while at an awards ceremony earlier in the month from Kekua's phone number. When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine," Swarbrick said. Swarbrick said the school hired investigators and their report indicated those behind the hoax were in contact with each other, discussing what they were doing. The investigators "were able to discover online chatter among the perpetrators that was certainly the ultimate proof of this, the joy they were taking," Swarbrick said. The casualness among themselves they were talking about what they accomplished. Swarbrick said for Te'o "the pain was real." The grief was real. The affection was real," he said. That's the nature of this sad, cruel game. Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not take the matter to the police, saying that the school left it up to Te'o and his family to do so. He added that Notre Dame did not plan to release the findings of its investigation. We had no idea of motive, and that was really significant to us. ... Was somebody trying to create an NCAA violation at the core of this? Was there somebody trying to impact the outcome of football games by manipulating the emotions of a key player? Was there an extortion request coming? When you match the lack of sort of detail we lacked until we got some help investigating it with the risk involved, it was clear to me until we knew more we had to just to continue to work to try to gather the facts," Swarbrick said. The Deadspin report changed all that.