These photos have been floating around the web, and they could very well be fakes. In fact, I'd bet they probably are fakes, but their existence proves that photos are not convincing proof in this day and age.

What kind of argument is this? "Fake photos mean that photographic evidence means nothing"? Even with fake pictures, if they convincingly have a date and time you will get people to investigate it in a story as big as this one, and what matters aren't a couple of contextless photos but what people are able to dig up when pointed in a specific direction.

If he really were still alive and were, for example, arrested (again) for something, he would almost certainly have a new furbished identity and the associated documentation. The real Jeffrey Epstein was confirmed to have multiple passports from different countries.

If the dude has been captured, you can't just use a fake ID as a magic ticket to not be identified. He's still the same organism, there are countless ways of identifying him based on existing evidence in a situation like that.