[fromo]

I'm going yo say you've heavily over thought the picture thing here if I'm being honest. It's extremely easy to catch out the people who try to use fake pictures, just tell them to write 2 separate things on themself/a piece of paper when you're varafying someone. It's quite hard to convincingly fake that, even if they can, they would quickly get caught out with follow up pics.
It's just simply about using common sense there, though that does tend to not be a common thing people have.
I'd say it's not even paranoia that makes me require evidence of who someone says they are, it's simply experience personally.