My thought on that is that they needed a new location so their image didn’t just look like a modified version of another of the victim’s public images, so NK searched for a stock photo for a professional looking location. Ars has just located the stock image they started from.

My guess would be that they needed to get a mid-point between existing photos of the guy whose identity they stole and the guy that would show up in the video interviews.

Are you sure that’s not 7931 you’re looking at?

7931 are the four corners, so it’d be an easy pattern.