Similar fires in the Florida Evergades were found to be started by Broward County firefighters—for overtime pay.
We had something like that in our volunteer fire department. There was a 19 year old kid that joined a few years ago. Shortly after he joined we had a rash of brush fires. After about 6 or 8 fires, some of the members of the hall started to notice that every time we were called out on one of the recent brush fires, this kid was always the first one there in full turn out gear. Wasn't long before somebody saw him setting a fire and the rest is history. There was no pay involved. He was doing it for the attention. The county prosecuted him for several counts of arson and last I heard he was away in the big house.....