A resident says he was added to the Tulum municipal payroll without his consent, a complaint that has revived scrutiny of alleged irregularities under previous city administrations.
The case matters beyond one person's tax bill. It suggests that the ghost employment schemes municipal auditors have been dismantling for months may have left ordinary citizens carrying federal tax debts for salaries they say they never collected, while public money flowed to names that never reported for work.
A Tax Debt for a Salary He Says He Never Saw
According to the complaint, which circulated on social media, the man discovered the problem when he filed his annual tax return. The Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT), Mexico's federal tax authority, notified him of a debt tied to a reported salary of 7,000 pesos every two weeks. He maintains he never received that income and had no idea it was registered under his name.
Juan Garza Pérez, the oficial mayor of the Tulum city government, the office that oversees municipal administration and personnel, said he will meet with the complainant in the coming days to review the case in detail and look for a way to resolve it.
City Hall Points to the 2023 to 2024 Period
Garza Pérez said the available information places the events between 2023 and 2024, when the Oficialía Mayor was headed by Bernabé Antonio Miranda Miranda. According to the official, Miranda Miranda held the post from September 30, 2021, until late September 2024, when Jessica Ramírez de la Rosa replaced him on September 24 of that year. She remained in the position until October 25, 2025.
Garza Pérez took office on November 10, 2025. Although the events predate his tenure, he said, the city government will advise the complainant and support him as far as its capacities allow.
He added that during the formal handover process he filed a series of observations with the Órgano Interno de Control, the municipal internal oversight body, which triggered what he described as an exhaustive audit.
Audits Have Already Pulled Ghost Employees From the Tulum Payroll
Those reviews detected multiple anomalies, Garza Pérez said, including people who appeared on the municipal payroll without ever showing up to perform their duties. Some have already been removed. The internal control body will handle the corresponding administrative procedures and determine any responsibilities that may apply, he added.
His account fits a pattern city officials have been documenting since late 2025. In February, human resources director Heidi Rojo Rubio reported that more than 100 people identified as aviadores, employees who drew a salary without performing any work, had been dropped from the payroll after physical inspections across departments and cross-checks of attendance records against official rosters. Only five were reinstated after proving they actually worked for the municipality. The purge cut biweekly payroll costs by as much as 9 million pesos and left the city with 1,711 employees.
In late June, Eugenio Barbachano Losa, who chairs the city council's anti-corruption commission, said more than 50 public servants had been dismissed during the current administration over alleged corruption, including bribery and embezzlement, and that an audit found more than 200 people on the payroll who were not assigned to any municipal work center.
The new complaint adds a dimension those figures did not capture. If a citizen's identity was used to register a salary he never received, the damage extends past the municipal treasury and lands on the person whose name absorbed the fiscal liability.
An Open Call for Other Affected Residents
Garza Pérez urged anyone who suspects they are in a similar situation to bring their case to the Oficialía Mayor. The goal, he explained, is to gather enough information to identify possible irregularities, refer them to the competent authorities, and investigate so that, if misconduct is proven, the public servants responsible face sanctions for misuse of their functions or the presumed misappropriation of public funds.
The first concrete step is the meeting between Garza Pérez and the complainant, expected within days. What remains open is whether the SAT debt can be cleared from the man's record, how many similar cases surface once residents start checking their own tax files, and what responsibilities the Órgano Interno de Control assigns when its administrative procedures conclude. No timeline has been set for those determinations.
Have you ever found an employer you never worked for listed in your SAT records? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.