{"id":248180,"date":"2026-04-13T21:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/248180\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T21:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:56:27","slug":"dallas-sues-former-firefighter-allegedly-paid-127k-after-quitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/248180\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas sues former firefighter allegedly paid $127K after quitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Dallas firefighter<\/a> kept getting paid for nearly two years after quitting his job \u2014 even as he moved out of Texas \u2014 according to a lawsuit filed by city attorneys last week. Now, the city wants its money back.<\/p>\n

Dallas city attorneys filed a lawsuit against Ivan Gonzales, alleging he continued receiving paychecks for 20 months after leaving Dallas Fire-Rescue<\/a> in June 2023. The payments totaled $127,441, including benefits.<\/p>\n

Gonzales, who had already moved to Florida, updated his banking information in the city\u2019s payroll system in 2024, allowing the unearned payments to continue being deposited directly into his account, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

After Gonzales resigned, his termination paperwork was submitted to human resources but not processed until April 2025, the city said. Meanwhile, according to the lawsuit, his supervisor continued approving biweekly paychecks under a presumption that anyone on his roster of more than 250 people worked 40 hours a week, even if they didn\u2019t submit time entries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many other Ivans and Gonzales\u2019 on Captain (Corey) Womack\u2019s roster which prevented him from realizing Mr. Gonzales had not been removed from the roster,\u201d the lawsuit said. Gonzales moved to Florida sometime in 2023 or 2024, the city said.<\/p>\n

Gonzales didn\u2019t immediately respond Monday to calls and texts left at a number listed for him in public records. City officials declined comment citing the pending litigation when asked by The Dallas Morning News if they found other cases of former employees being paid erroneously or if any policies had been changed to address such issues.<\/p>\n

Chris Peterson, president of the Dallas Fire Fighters Association, acknowledged receiving a request for comment from The News but didn’t immediately respond.<\/p>\n

The city attorneys also want interest on the money, starting from when they filed the lawsuit. City payroll records from 2024 list a Dallas firefighter named Ivan Gonzales with the same hire date, earning $72,422 annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis money was not intended to be a gift,\u201d city attorney Tammy Palomino and assistant city attorneys James Richards, Mark Baggett and Kyle Paur wrote in the lawsuit, adding that those \u201cpayments belong to the city in equity and good conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Dallas firefighter kept getting paid for nearly two years after quitting his job \u2014 even as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,94315,87998,88952],"class_list":["post-248180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-dallas-fire-rescue","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-city-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}