Who Is Teresa Giudice's Nephew?

It's the question the entire world is asking:

Who is Teresa Giudice's nephew and why did the mention of him cause her to blow up at Danielle Staub on last night's reunion episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey?

There are a lot of rumors floating around about who this "nephew" is, but–like most things on the internet–the majority of these claims are made up.

On Monday night, Teresa launched into Danielle (and pushed Andy Cohen!) when Danielle accused Teresa of not acknowledging her nephew. Teresa paused and then shot up from her seat and began hurling an awesome amount of obscenities at Staub.

There have been rumors circulating that the "nephew" that Danielle referenced was actually a love child between Joe Giudice and his sister-in-law. There was also a claim that the nephew was an illegitimate child and was involved with some alleged "criminal element" of Joe's family.

There is no actual evidence of the Giudices being involved with a criminal element (aside from Italian stereotyping) or of Joe carrying on an affair with his alleged sister-in-law. So where did these "nephew" claims come from? The Houston Chronicle did a recap of last night's reunion special and the writer speculated that these were the reasons behind Teresa's reaction:

Now, the Internet is totally clueless about what Danielle's even talking about. Twitter and Facebook are, of this writing, alight with inquiring minds desperate to know what this was all about. I will tell you that I do not know. I really have no idea at all. Really. This is merely speculative. REALLY REALLY SPECULATIVE, but I have two theories. Either someone in Teresa's family had a love child (which is probably more likely) or, and this is the sexier theory, Joe's family has some sort of criminal element and one of his less desirable family members had a baby to whom they'd rather not claim relation. But, again, I'm literally making that up.

While the writer acknowledges that these are completely made-up theories some people in the internet took them seriously. Jacqueline later tweeted that there was no "love child" between Joe and his sister-in-law. From Jacqueline's Twitter:

No, there is no Tara or love child.Lol!Tamra from OC HW was out 2dinner w/us the night of accident,maybe that's the blond pple saw

The "Tara" Jacqueline references is the name of a mystery woman that random Twitter users have been speculating was Joe's mistress. Reality Tea said that they had received emails about Joe's affair with a mysterious "Tara G.," but there has been no evidence that Joe has been sleeping with this woman.

"Tara" has been mentioned by a few commenters on this very blog, but I always had my doubts about Joe having a mistress because for starters Joe and Teresa's love for each other just seems really sincere to me and then too, with Teresa's now-infamous temper, I don't see her putting up with Joe cheating on her. Now Jacqueline has come out and denied it, but she's obviously biased and either way something must be up for Teresa to go nuts like that.