A serial arsonist with nearly 80 prior arrests was busted and released twice this week for setting fires in Midtown — including once in Penn Station, according to cops and police sources. 

Armando Calderon, 66, set the contents of a trash can ablaze at the corner of West 31st Street and Eighth Avenue on Monday night, authorities said. 

He was arrested and charged with arson, but released on a desk appearance ticket, police said.

Calderon was back in action Tuesday morning — when he set a fire inside another garbage can inside Penn Station, police said. 

Once again, he was charged with arson, only to be issued another desk appearance ticket, cops said. 

Calderon has at least 78 prior unsealed arrests dating back to 1982 — most for criminal mischief and arson in the confines of the Midtown South Precinct, the sources said. 

He doesn’t have any open cases, according to a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 

Most recently, in December 2021, he had 10 misdemeanor cases dismissed — over an assistant district attorney’s objection — after he was found unfit to stand trial, a DA’s office spokeswoman said. 

The cases, all misdemeanors, included arsons, sale or possession of bent MetroCards, and one public lewdness incident, according to the spokeswoman. 

The address Calderon provided to police is 390 Ninth Ave., the location of the former James A. Farley Post Office.

He was busted back in March 2012 for allegedly setting 15 trash cans ablaze in Midtown — and told fire marshals he did it because he was homeless and angry about his circumstances, the New York Times reported at the time. 

Calderon served about five months behind bars in connection to those arsons, the Times later reported. 

The DA’s office did not immediately provide information on that case.