Haha. The consensus for years has been that he was a liar. Other facets point to that (secret drug use, etc.).
BUT, the thing that was odd about it was that he made this same claim in front of his old, "good", friends too. And they weren't exactly sports idiots. One of them worked directly with the Lakers and had a room in his house dedicated to USC memorabilia. So, he didn't seem like someone who wouldn't have looked into it himself and questioned old Lee.
I'm still leaning toward liar. But, thought maybe there was some half truth like he was recruited and didn't qualify or something.
(I'm really not completely sure how old he was. He was a short-term roommate that I only knew from a newspaper ad. He said that he played with the starting RB at UCLA in highschool [around 2004]. So, I believe that would put him around the recruiting class of 2000ish? Maybe a little earlier if he was older than that RB)