In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…
The fingers and palm were analysed in the photo. There's a better photo here: https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2021/m...
Without any image processing, we can already see palm prints and the ridges and lines in the palm and fingers. These are unique biometric identifiers. In fact, palms have more identifying characteristics than fingerprints.
They are almost certainly telling the truth in this story.