Banned for 38 cents

Tim, you poor thing.  Don't believe everything anyone tells you.  Neither Travis Clarke nor anyone else at Rivers Casino had authority to ban you "from every casino in the country."  He may not have even had authority to ban you from that one, had due process been correctly followed.  So sorry.

Candy

If I notice credits on a machine I generally hit cash out then leave the ticket on top or place it to the side but I don't always check before I start putting money in. 

No, no different at all. Cash on the casino's floor is either a) the property of the person who dropped it, if that can be determined, or b) the property of the casino. It can NEVER be the property of the person who finds it.

I don't agree with the way this was handled, or with the way casinos in general handle abandoned credits, lost TITOs, etc., but the concept they follow is rooted in common law. Lost, abandoned, or stolen property never belongs to the person who finds it. And for what it's worth, in the instances discussed, it doesn't belong to the casino, either; they have to, and do, account for and safeguard it.

I'm sure that this casino's policy is an overreaction to some prior incident and an attempt to compensate. Very few owners/operators/managers of businesses react to issues appropriately; they either under react or overreact. I suspect that Arturo was given some kind of dressing down prior to this incident, and since he was at the end of the blame chain (no underling to scapegoat), he took it out on the first scofflaw customer he could find. Bad luck for the OP.

I was waiting in line to check in at Main Street Station (many moons ago), when I glanced down and to my right and saw a slot bucket full of quarters sitting on the floor. I looked up and tried to see who might have set it down. There wasn't any obvious candidate, so I called out, "Who left this here?" while holding the bucket in the air. No responses from anyone. I called security. They were at first reluctant to do anything other than tell me to keep the money. I protested, saying that security footage could easily identify who had lost the money, and they could have easily contacted them, since they must have very recently checked in. The guard sighed, had me fill out a form, and told me I could claim the money in 48 hours if no one else reported it as lost. Two days later, I was asked to come to the security office and was handed the same bucket, still full of quarters. I signed a form and that was it.

I got the sense that they had done nothing to find out who it belonged to. I guess Arturo would have had me dragged off and waterboarded.

To avoid what happened to the OP, I put money in the machine, play the "extra" credits off, and cash out. That way, I can argue, if it ever comes up, that I just wanted to play a few spins and didn't even notice that the credit balance wasn't zero 

Obviously, the question was rhetorical and the answer was sarcastic. Tim violated the cardinal rule regarding dealing with bullies when they're operating in their Zone of Power: don't argue, don't ask them anything, just get the hell out of there.

He got a pretty good deal, though. For 38 cents, he received an unequivocal message to never visit that casino again. Not because they told him so, but because of the way they treated him. He has no reason to return.

I don't think security could ban you.I would have called for a supervisor.People take those all the time.Security probable does as well.So sorry that happened.

Agree with Patsy about  those less than dollar amounts (I call them tiny tickets) that are printed separately.  I took one out the other day that was hanging out of the tiny ticket slot, because I was going to cash my own TITO, even amount.  The tiny ticket was for small change like 17 cents.  I didn't want to mess with it.  A gal was playing a slot close by the ATM.  I offered it to her, she waved me off.  So I set the ticket down on the machine next to her.  No idea what happened to it from there, of course.

But, I've often given a tiny ticket to someone playing, and most gladly accept it.  I haven't yet been pulled over by Security or anybody else, and I've never seen a player who accepted one pulled over. 

I often do the donation just because it is quicker than waiting on that stupid tiny ticket to print.

Candy

Mostly agree, but there's one important exception, rights of salvage under maritime law.  So if you find a TITO ticket in the toilet, it's yours.