"But just wait, (the truth) will all come out," he said. "God knows our character. People are going to say what people are going to say."

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was named in the Deadspin article.

Notre Dame's investigation into the matter confirmed that two men and a woman, including Tuiasosopo, were behind the hoax, a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The source requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A woman pretending to be Kekua called Te'o last month, claiming she had faked her death last fall because she was afraid of drug dealers, the source said.

Following that December 6 conversation, Te'o went to his coaches with the story, which spurred Notre Dame to hire outside investigators to look into it. The investigation began the day after Christmas, and the results were presented January 4, days before the national championship game that Te'o's team lost.

Why did relatives say they had met her?

In September and October, when the story of Te'o and his girlfriend received a lot of press press attention, several stories appeared about how they met. One in October by Indiana's South Bend Tribune, the newspaper of Notre Dame's hometown, said the couple met at a football game in Palo Alto, California, in 2009.

Te'o's father was quoted in the article saying they exchanged phone numbers and a love affair began.

On Friday, Te'o said he lied to his father about meeting Kekua because he was embarrassed to tell his family he was in love with a woman he never met.

"I knew that -- I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," he told ESPN. "And that alone, people find out that this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn't meet her as well."

The lie he told his father led his family to tell reporters that Te'o had met his girlfriend, he told ESPN.

The calls from the woman continued after December 6, but Te'o did not answer, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told reporters this week.

At that point, Te'o confided in his parents and at least two friends and a girlfriend he had at the time about the calls, the source with knowledge of the matter told CNN. He and the "real" girlfriend have since ended that relationship.

The Heisman Trophy was awarded December 8, and Te'o continued to make comments about losing his girlfriend.

In the ESPN interview, Te'o said he wasn't fully convinced it was a hoax until Wednesday, Schaap said.

Woman says her picture was part of hoax, though she didn't know Te'o

One woman whose photos were part of the hoax says that she was exploited herself.

Donna Te'i told CNN earlier this week that she'd never talked to Te'o, nor did she have any involvement in the online plot involving the Notre Dame player and the woman he believed was his girlfriend.

But the 26-year-old woman is part of the story. She was identified in pictures linked to a Twitter account using the name uilanirae, which has since been taken down, as the sister of the apparently nonexistent girlfriend known as Lennay Kekua, according to Deadspin.

Donna Te'i acknowledged she was portrayed in the online images as Kekua's sister, but not of her own accord. Her father, Luteru Lou Te'i -- who spoke to CNN on Saturday, as his daughter was not at home -- said these pictures were illicitly taken from the Facebook page of another of his daughters.