Catfishing is Caught in the Middle of The Notre Dame Linebacker - Central Coast News KION/KCBA

Stories about the death of the girlfriend of Notre Dame's Heisman Trophy nominee had many people moved about the story of Manti Te'o's, but it was all a hoax. Officials are calling what happened to Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o 'Catfishing.'

It's the act of creating a fake profile to make someone fall in love.

Since the hoax the term catfish has been thrown around and it has nothing to do with the actual fish, it's an online dating scam.

According to Urbandictionary.com "a catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not by using Facebook or other social media to create false identities."

The term catfish first came from a documentary called Catfish that was made in 2010. It was about a man who built a relationship with a woman over Facebook who wasn't real and created several fake profiles.

Now there's even a new MTV reality-based show called Catfish that exposes the truths and lies of online dating.

Central Coast News looked into it and found you can even buy a fake online girlfriend for under $40 and an ex under $20. So the next time you hit that request just make sure you're talking to a real person not an imposter.

Forbes recently released a report from Facebook saying out of it's 955 million users, 83 million accounts are fake. That's almost 10%.

Notre Dame officials said they are going to hire a private investigator to look into the situation.