The arsonists feared they wouldn’t be paid for the attack as police investigate if the intended target was actually a Jewish business torched days later.
The arsonists feared they wouldn’t be paid for the attack as police investigate if the intended target was actually a Jewish business torched days later.
By Sally Rawsthorne
January 23, 2025 — 10.04am
The men responsible for a fire at a Bondi Beach brewery asked if they had been given the wrong location and whether they would still be paid, after a furious spray from the man who had sent them to light it.
“Use [sic] f—ed the whole thing now If use [sic] f—ing couldn’t do it from the start then why did use [sic] even went there for f— me It’s not even 2% burned f— me dead,” a person using the name “James Bond” on an encrypted messaging app wrote to Guy Finnegan, the day after a botched fire at beachside Curly Lewis Brewery.
The failed fire was deliberately lit on October 17 by two men, Finnegan, 31, and Craig Bantoft, 37.
Despite the fuel poured in the entryway of the Campbell Parade business, it self-extinguished in about a minute but did cause $65,000 worth of damage.
In the fire’s aftermath, Finnegan and Bantoft questioned whether they would still be paid and whether they had been sent to the wrong address.
“So what now,” Bantoft texted Finnegan the next day. “So is he paying or nah[?]”
The federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw this week said police were investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs”.
Later in the conversation, Bantoft said “James Bond” continued to send angry messages.
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“All I’m copping from him was messages like wtf, you’d didn’t even do it. There was like 2% damage! Wtf etc etc,” he said.
Later in conversation, Finnegan texted: “Was it the right place, what was damaged[?]
“I know there was no other possible way it could have been done and as for [it being an] easy job to do like he said what a load of s— so I can be bothered explaining myself to him, you and I know we done all that we could that’s all I care about.
Finnegan said later: “I’m starting to think he has sent us to the wrong place LoL.”
Detectives from Strike Force Pearl, established to investigate the spate of antisemitic attacks that have been plaguing Sydney for months, have been investigating whether the fire at the brewery was the result of a mix-up, with the intended target being a Jewish business hit by fire three days later.
Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a kosher catering business and deli 1200 metres from the brewery, caught fire in the early hours of October 20.
Vision from the second crime scene showed a detective seizing what looked like a red jerrycan.
Police initially said the fire was not suspicious, but later appealed for information and footage from the public.
Two other men, Wayne Ogden and Juon Amuoi, have since been charged over the fire at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen. They remain before the courts. Neither Bantoft nor Finnegan have been charged over the second fire.
Bantoft is being held on remand on unrelated matters and will return to Waverley Local Court in March for sentencing.
Finnegan was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 months imprisonment for damaging property by fire as part of an 18-month aggregate sentence for a range of offences.
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Sally Rawsthorne is a crime reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via Twitter or email.
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