Even if they have a "real" picture or a credible description that is not good enough. Instead of using an anime character a malicious actor could use an image generator [0], they could generate a few images, obtain something credible to most folks, and use that to get a few fake identities going. Sadly, trusting people to be the real thing and not a fake identity on the Internet is difficult now and it will get worse.
You can quite easily generate a realistic photo, bio, even entire personal blogs and GitHub projects, using generative AI, to make it look like it's a real person.
My GitHub says exactly who I am!