Within hours of the caravan being found, any perceived threat was mitigated, and the investigation was referred to the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT), which includes the AFP, NSW Police, ASIO and the NSW Crime Commission.
Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the JCTT believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot - essentially a criminal con job.
This was because of the information they already had, how easily the caravan was found and how visible the explosives were in the caravan. Also, there was no detonator.
Today (10 March, 2025), I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.
The JCTT discussed providing this information earlier to the public, however, during our investigations, we continued to receive tip-offs about other terror plots related to this matter.
Out of an abundance of caution, it was agreed by all agencies that the operation would remain a JCTT investigation. While we were confident all these tip-offs were fake, we could not risk ignoring the information provided, and we kept investigating at the highest level.
We are now confident that all these tip-offs were fabricated, and the caravan plot was an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore.
There were several people who had different levels of involvement in this fake terrorism plot but put simply, the plan was the following:
Organise for someone to buy a caravan;
Place it with explosives and written material of antisemitic nature;
Leave it in a specific location;
And then, once that had happened, inform law enforcement about an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians.
We believe the person pulling the strings wanted changes to their criminal status but maintained a distance from their scheme and hired alleged local criminals to carry out parts of their plan.
