What would you do?

[regnis]

Let's say hypothetically that you are playing VP in the high limits room. It's a small room and just a few people playing early afternoon. You know them all and are slightly friendly with them.

Around 5:00 everyone but you leaves and you go to the diamond room for a little snack. You come back, sit down at a machine, and notice there is a $1200 voucher sitting there. You say to yourself---I wonder who left this here. You continue to play for an hour or 2 and no one comes looking for it and you are still the only one in the room.

You know that in Vegas it is a serious crime to pick up any stray voucher. Is this a trap? Should you take it? But this is Indiana, not Vegas, but still presumably a crime.

If you turn it in to a slot rep or the cage, are they just going to steal it?

You get brave and pick up the voucher and slide it into your machine---it won't take it--says cannot be redeemed at this machine. You go to the self serve machines and try to cash it and it says the same. You say to yourself--has it already been cashed? But they don't leave loose tickets laying around after cashing. If I go to the cage to cash it am I asking for trouble?

In this hypothetical-it is taken to the cage and cashed with no problem.

What would you do??

[Alan Mendelson]

Good question and good problem. You answered it with the Vegas example. In Nevada, any chips or vouchers or money found in the casino or left on a machine is the property of the casino.

I don't know what the rules are at the casino where you are playing but the RIGHT answer would be whatever the local rules are.

But then you ask "what would you do?" And to answer I have a story to tell:

About fifteen years ago when I only played slots -- not craps, not video poker -- just slots, I sat down at a machine with my sister and brother-in-law on the machines next to me and I noticed that the machine I was sitting at had $350 of credits on it. At the time we didn't know the law. If I had known the law, I would have called over a slot floor person.

So the three of us debated what to do and here's what we decided: I will play the $350 and if the previous player comes back I would reach into my wallet and give that person the $350. So, I played and played and played... and no one showed up. And we left.

I now know that it was wrong. I'm guilty. And everytime I make a bet in a casino and lose I think I am being punished by a higher authority for playing through that $350 left on the machine!!

[regnis]

At the race track (or OTB) I have found 100's of vouchers over the years, from pennies to 100's of dollars. But most people use their player card when betting and their player # is on the voucher. Therefore, it can be traced to the owner. So I always turn those in to a manager that I trust will not just cash it himself. Usually, a few minutes later someone (the owner) will come over and thank me or send over a drink or something so I know it actually did get to the right person. That same courtesy was not extended to me the one time that I left a voucher in the machine.

[slingshot]

My wife and I were walking through the high-limit floor just looking around and found 2 $100 bills right in front of a machine. The lady playing the machine looked down at us picking it up, but was so engrossed in her machine she quickly looked away and kept playing as if mesmerized by it. We stood there for a moment with my wife breathless, and no one even noticed.

[Rob.Singer]

Finders keepers, losers weepers. Throughout life you lose things and find things. It all evens out over time.

[Alan Mendelson]

Finders keepers, losers weepers. Throughout life you lose things and find things. It all evens out over time.

So what would you do in Nevada when you know it's a crime to keep the money? I'm not sure if it's a felony, but I would think if the dollar amount is high enough it is.

[Rob.Singer]

So what would you do in Nevada when you know it's a crime to keep the money? I'm not sure if it's a felony, but I would think if the dollar amount is high enough it is.

I've never known it to be a felony because it's not something I've ever cared to look into. So when I found $300 on the floor at Terribles in LV around 2000, I just put it in my wallet. Another time I found myself in the high limit vp room at the Mirage sitting on a small roll of hundreds--can't remember but I think it was $1200. I was at a $5/$10/$25 machine for over an hour playing SPS and I decided to pretend I didn't know it was there just in case someone came back for it. Well they didn't, so I took it with me along with the $10,000 handpay I got for hitting four Aces on another NEGATIVE $25 8/5 BP game. I never counted it until I left the building. Also, I found a $100 black chip on the floor while waiting in line at the Hard Rock. When I got to the cashier, I cashed it along with my tickets.

Now you'll ask me if I'd still do it today if I know it's against the law. Probably not and not only because it may be against the law, but because I don't really need the money these days and the casinos, as I've said, are my "friends" in retirement, whereas I used to motivate myself by seeing them as a personal enemy.

[Alan Mendelson]

When I played that $350 on the slot machine I didn't know it was against the law either. So I can't criticize you for what you did. Before I knew what the law was, I probably would have done the same thing.

[Rob.Singer]

I also LOST my wallet with $3300 in it in Laughlin. My wallet was returned complete with everything but the cash. So that person not only broke some law, they acted morally wrong because they knew who's money it really was. The person who turned it in to security claimed there was no cash in it. I guess I was just happy to get it back with my stuff, even though I still had to cancel my credit and debit cards for new ones--a hassle.

[Max A Million]

I remember a similar situation the first time I went to a casino in Louisiana. I remember walking around and looking at the casino's video poker machines to see if there was a game that would appeal to me. Well, I glanced at an empty row of machines and I found one machine containing about $200 on it. I was tempted to just go to the machine and cash it out quickly but I then thought to myself, "No, way! No one would just leave $200 on the table like that!" I even stood around the area for a bit to see if anybody would come back to play on the machine. Eventually I just left the area because I thought that maybe a worker may have been "holding" the machine for a customer while that person had to go take care of some business. I also thought that maybe it was a setup to catch someone stealing money also. I could just imagine the casino security shouting, "You there! Thief! We got you!"

[quahaug]

I remember a similar situation the first time I went to a casino in Louisiana. I remember walking around and looking at the casino's video poker machines to see if there was a game that would appeal to me. Well, I glanced at an empty row of machines and I found one machine containing about $200 on it. I was tempted to just go to the machine and cash it out quickly but I then thought to myself, "No, way! No one would just leave $200 on the table like that!" I even stood around the area for a bit to see if anybody would come back to play on the machine. Eventually I just left the area because I thought that maybe a worker may have been "holding" the machine for a customer while that person had to go take care of some business. I also thought that maybe it was a setup to catch someone stealing money also. I could just imagine the casino security shouting, "You there! Thief! We got you!"

throw in a hundy and start playing.

[regnis]

Found this on LVA:

Q: If I find a casino chip on the floor, is it mine to keep?

A: You might think that the answer to this question would be unambiguous, but in fact it's something of a gray area, since it isn't actually covered by law. According to NRS 120A.135, a 1989 addition to the law governing Abandoned Property, this statute specifically does not apply to unredeemed gaming chips or tokens. Likewise, although all chips and tokens are officially the property of the casino that issued them and thus in theory should be returned if found, in practice it seems that if someone has exchanged their cash for a token and then lost that token, the application of that rule becomes somewhat hazy. The only applicable provision of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board's Regulation 12 governing Chips & Tokens states, "A licensee shall not redeem its chips or tokens if presented by a person who the licensee knows or reasonably should know is not a patron of its gaming establishment" (12.060). This appears to put the onus on the casino to figure out whether you'd gambled there when you found the bounty and if so, it seemingly does not apply whether or not you won that specific chip.

Having verified which laws don't apply, we called the Gaming Control Board in an attempt to get some kind of official line on this, only to be told it's the law of "finders keepers" that pretty much applies in such instances. Of course, the casino would prefer you to hand in the token, so that it can be returned to their chip stack, but how often is security going to know for sure whether you're picking up a chip that you dropped yourself or one that you just happened to spot on the floor? And how is the person at the cage going to know whether you found it or won it? The only time that Regulation 12.060 might come into effect would be if the chip was of a relatively high denomination in terms of the establishment norm (i.e., $500 might catch the attention of a downtown cage, but it might take a $5000 chip to arouse any suspicion at the big Strip joints). If the casino suspected that a large chip was not yours, then they would be within their rights to question where and when you won it and would be able to verify this from the records at the table where you claim to have gotten it. But if it's a chip worth $100 or less, it's much harder for them to trace, since so many of them are in play at any time and it probably wouldn't be considered worth the time or effort to verify ownership.

When we checked with the security departments at various casinos to see what their in-house policy was in practice, we found that it varied from property to property. Some agreed with the "finders keepers" rule, while at others it was in theory mandatory that you hand over what you find to security. In these instances, if the money remains unclaimed after a certain period of time (anything from 15-60 days, we found) then it's yours to keep. To conclude, although the casinos we spoke with did not appear to have stringent negative policies in place with regard to the keeping of money or chips that you might find on the floor, other properties may take a dimmer view of this. The practice of "silver mining" or "slot walking" (deliberately scouting the machines for money or TITO tickets inadvertently left behind) is generally looked upon as lowlife behavior and in some casinos is specifically outlawed.

Also found some info saying in Pennsylvania, they have signs basically saying "finders keepers" doesn't apply. Found chips etc. are the property of the casino.

In my "hypothetical" to start this thread, the person did, as someone else, suggested,start accumulating a bunch of vouchers by constantly cashing out different amounts and then take the whole bunch to the cage to cash.