For posterity... As of 2022 and fakeroot 1.29 (and maybe earlier, too), it appears there is an udocumented environment variable that can be set to prevent fakeroot from ever calling chown().
Try: export FAKEROOTDONTTRYCHOWN='1' Then run fakeroot. Source (in fakeroot version 1.29): https://salsa.debian.org/clint/fakeroot/-/blob/debian/1.29-1/libfakeroot.c#L646 https://salsa.debian.org/clint/fakeroot/-/blob/debian/1.29-1/libfakeroot.c#L865
