A security officer who worked at two Manhattan hotels was arrested on Saturday and charged with setting eight fires at the hotels over four years, fire officials said. 
 
 According to fire marshals, Mariano Barbosa Jr., the director of security at the Yotel on 10th Avenue and 42nd Street, set the fires in an attempt to make the hotels less popular and his job more manageable. 
 
 Mr. Barbosa, 30, of West New York, N.J., had also worked as a security officer at the SoHo Grand on West Broadway. 
 
 He is accused of starting the fires, the first in 2009 and the last this month, in hallways, in stairwells and in front of exit doors to maximize the potential damage. He was on duty when the fires broke out, the Fire Department said. All of the fires, which were set between 10:11 p.m. and 5:09 a.m., were quickly extinguished. 
 
 Two firefighters sustained minor injuries in a fire in February, Jim Long, the Fire Department’s director of public information, said. 
 
 Mr. Barbosa was arrested, Mr. Long said, after he submitted to voluntary questioning. It became clear during those interviews that Mr. Barbosa was the likely culprit, Mr. Long said. 
 
 It appeared to fire marshals that Mr. Barbosa had grown tired of patrons at the hotels’ bars and parties, said a fire official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. “He desired that the incidents would be blamed on the clientele, and if that was the case maybe they would curtail the parties, and the venues would be more manageable,” the official said. 
 
 Yotel said in a statement that it was cooperating with the Fire Department and the police. A spokeswoman for the SoHo Grand declined to comment. 
 
 “It’s disturbing that an individual charged with the safety of hotel occupants would callously endanger their lives — and the lives of firefighters — for personal gain,” the fire commissioner, Salvatore J. Cassano, said in a statement. 
 
 Before Mr. Barbosa’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Saturday evening, his wife, Leslie Martinez, 27, said Yotel gave him an award last year, which included a four-day trip to Las Vegas. 
 
 She said he worked hard for the company and often slept in complimentary rooms, just so he could be there when he woke up for his next shift. 
 
 “This is a slap in the face,” Ms. Martinez said, fighting back tears. “I don’t understand how all of the sudden he’s the bad guy.” 
 
 She said she met Mr. Barbosa at a church in Brooklyn when she was 14 and he was 18. They have been married 12 years and have three young sons, two of them autistic. 
 
 “For them to turn this around on him is completely unfair,” Ms. Martinez said. ||||| FDNY officials claim Mariano Barbosa set fires in New York City hotels so that they would temporarily shut down and he could go to a free hotel room and drink the afternoon away. 
 
 Conflicting pictures emerged about a hotel security director in New York who allegedly set fires to get out of work, with a co-worker calling him a “normal person” as authorities gave new details about his four-year spree. 
 
 Mariano Barbosa, 26, is being held on arson, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief charges — and prosecutors revealed how he committed the crimes. 
 
 Frank Franklin II/AP The Yotel Hotel in New York offers a luggage robot. Too bad a security director can't also be replaced by an automaton, or the Yotel could have avoided several fires allegedly set by former security chief Mariano Barbosa. 
 
 Barbosa lit up bedding materials in his first fire in February 2009 while heading security at the Soho Grand Hotel, according to court documents. 
 
 Barry Winiker/Getty Images The Soho Grand Hotel in downtown Manhattan has the dubious distinction of being where former security director Mariano Barbosa allegedly set his first deliberate fire. 
 
 At the Yotel Hotel, Barbosa used a towel in three separate incidents and bed sheets in two others from October 2011 to this month, court documents show. 
 
 Kendall Rodriguez Mariano Barbosa was arraigned Sunday morning in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges that he allegedly set series of arson fires in New York City hotels where he worked. 
 
 A Yotel co-worker was stunned. 
 
 “He was a normal person, I was surprised, just like any one else,” the worker said.
– A New York City hotel security director didn't want to have to work so hard—so fire department sources tell the New York Daily News that he set fires to close down the very buildings he was protecting, so he could hang out in a comp room and drink. Mariano Barbosa, 30, has been arrested for alleged arson; court papers say Barbosa set his first fire at the Soho Grand Hotel, using bedding to fuel the fire. That was one of eight fires he allegedly set in four years of work at the Soho Grand and the Yotel, the New York Times reports; the fires were reportedly in halls, stairs, and exits, boosting damage. Fire officials tell the Times that Barbosa wanted to cut business at the hotels, thus making his job easier. "He desired that the incidents would be blamed on the clientele, and if that was the case maybe they would curtail the parties, and the venues would be more manageable," one official says. Interestingly, just last year, he got an award from the Yotel: a four-day trip to Las Vegas, his wife says. She says he would sleep in complimentary rooms in order to be there for the next shift. "This is a slap in the face," she says. "I don’t understand how all of the sudden he’s the bad guy."