I was recently approached by a user claiming to be the developer of Sync for Lemmy who wanted to be a moderator of the community I created, !syncforlemmy.
I was able to verify this user was indeed LJ Dawson as I knew where to contact him on Discord.
It is quite possible that an impostor user on another instance may be created, for example ljdawson@beehaw.org could easily be made.
Should Lemmy have a verified user marker for members who are of importance to any given community? Are there any other options to protect users against nefarious persons playing impostor?
No.
Let’s say you trust billg@microsoft.com. Anyone can already create billg@scam-site.cn. You wouldn’t trust that, why would you trust any other account you can’t authenticate?
Like most impersonation questions, the answer is to verify identity through a known trusted source, as you did.