MEXICO CITY—Prosecutors are investigating how a man certified as dead got elected mayor of a village in southern Mexico.

Authorities say relatives of Lenin Carballido used a death certificate showing that he died of a diabetic coma in 2010 to convince police to drop an arrest warrant against him for allegedly participating in a 2004 gang rape.

A living Carballido later ran in, and narrowly won, Sunday’s election in San Agustin Amatengo in Oaxaca state. In his campaign, he posted photos of himself all around the village of 1,400 residents.

But shortly after his victory, the death certificate surfaced with his full name of Leninguer Carballido.

Officials in Oaxaca said Thursday that the certificate had been drawn up and signed by a public registry official, but that the information had been faked.

Carballido’s party, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, known as the PRD, said it had been fooled by the candidate.

“When he registered as a candidate, he presented all his paperwork, his birth certificate, a letter stating he had no criminal record,” said Rey Morales, the state leader of the PRD. “He fooled the prosecutors office, he fooled the office of records, he fooled electoral officials.

“If all this is true, he cannot take office as mayor,” said Morales.

Carballido didn’t answer his cellphone Thursday.

Haydee Reyes Soto, the director of the Oaxaca public records office, said the registry official who drew up the fake death certificate used a real official form, signed it and stamped it with an official seal, and even listed it under a file number used to record a real death.

“The form is real; what is false is the information,” Reyes Soto said. He said the registry official is being questioned by prosecutors and would be fired.

According to records, a woman accused of Carballido and four other men of having raped her in Oaxaca city in 2004.

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Mayra Ricardez, spokeswoman for the Oaxaca state prosecutors’ office, said the arrest warrant against Carballido was “never served, because his family showed officers a false death certificate.”

Ricardez said the statute of limitations had not run out on the crime.

“The prosecutors’ office is taking all the legal steps necessary to revive the case and serve the arrest warrant that is still pending,” she said.