but the dude pretending to be Lenay did know the girl from the pictures and was able to keep getting new pictures from her social media to keep up the catfish as a real person.

Of course, at the time, that wasn't really clear, and so the news trucks were trying to figure out her role in the whole "Lenay" saga.
When the boss announced that she knew nothing about the "Lenay" persona and that she wasn't aware that her images were being used for the persona in the relationship with Manti it started to solidify what really was going on, but the day they showed up to her work, many were wondering if she had made up the persona and then fake killed herself to exit the relationship.