The following is based on an actual email sent to the USCF office:
Joe claims to have withdrawn from an event, but the rating report shows him as having lost his last game.
He says he wrote ‘w/d’ on the wall charts.
The TD has no knowledge of his having withdrawn and paired him for the last round. (He was not a factor in any prizes.)
It isn’t clear whether his opponent marked the results as a win on forfeit or not.
As the TD for this event, what would you do if Joe contacts you?
On the wallchart or the pairing sheet? I would have no reason to expect a TD to catch it on the wallchart. Most would catch it on the pairing sheet. (Though he should still have let the TD know in person or place a note on the computer where pairings are made in addition to marking the pairing sheet.)
So, when he contacts me I should first mention that he was fined the EF and should send that to me.
Well, the wallcharts are normally thrown away each round, so I would have no way to check that. If he had marked the pairing sheet, I would normally be able to check those as I commonly save them. And I could see if his opponent marked a forfeit which I missed. So, once the check for his fine has cleared, I would try to contact his opponent and find out if the game was unplayed.
The original email said:
I’ll let people speculate as to what that means.
Does that mean he wrote it on the table he sat at during the last round he played? 
I like Martinak’s approach to the problem. Pay the fine, and then we’ll talk. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for a player who writes w/d on the wallchart since;
Only TD’s are supposed to write anything on the wallchart. (Yes, I’ve been “CCA trained”),
Unless the player was a total newbie he should know that to insure that his withdrawal was properly noted by the TD he needs to give the TD a note, or leave a note at his computer.
My number 1 rule as TD is “Give it to me in writing!” Someone tells me something without giving me a note, there is a good chance by the time I get back to my computer I’m going to have forgotten who said what about whatever.
Rule #2, “If you don’t give it to me in person, put it on my keyboard”. If it’s not on my keyboard it’s very likely it will vanish into some pile of papers that I may not look at again until I get home, or more to the point will get tossed at the end of the day.
Rule #3, “Don’t send some little kid to deliver the message.” Ever seen the Family Circus cartoon with Billy being asked to do something, and he goes 20 different places first? That’s what it’s like when kids deliver messages to the TD.
I once had a player from out of state whom I had heard of and who had never been in one of my events before tell me he was withdrawing after losing in an early round. At the time I was doing something like updating wall charts. (This was pre SwisSys).
I said “OK, but who the heck are you?”
I believe that the player in this case is an experienced tournament player who has played in numerous events directed by the TD of that event.
As to ‘writing on the table’, I once had a player do precisely that. The site sent me the tablecloth by certified mail, along with a request to never darken their door again. (And I have never been back in that motel, not even for non-chess events.)
In my events, I have a very obvious bye/withdraw list posted next to the pairing sheets. Whenever someone comes to me and says that he is withdrawing, I tell him to sign the sheet. It generally makes for fewer problems.
I also, five or ten minutes after I have started the round, walk around the tournament room and make a note of which games haven’t started, and try to find the players who are supposed to be playing at that board. Then I watch out for those players to show up, and at the end of the hour I usually tell the player who is present the proper procedure for claiming the forfeit.
None of this matters for the current situation, although I hope it will help to prevent such things from happening in the future.
However, I’m mindful of a state championship I played in once when I was just beginning tournament chess (in fact it was my first two day tournament) directed by a very well known, and since deceased TD. A player withdrew at the end of the first day, but for the fourth round he was paired with the TD’s wife. He was rated about 400 points higher than she was, but I don’t remember if the pairing was appropriate by score groups. In any event, she dutifully sat at the board for an hour and waited for his flag to fall. The game was rated.
Alex Relyea
Did you tell the Ethics Committee?
I guess this event happened pre-MSA since there didnt seem to be anything peculiar about the oldest event on your rating history, not to mention the TD listed is alive and well.
Okay I admit it. I looked. 
No. I was just a kid, had played in three or four tournaments, and I don’t think I had ever heard of the ethics committee at that time. Anyway, since the player effected didn’t make a complaint, could I have?
Alex Relyea
Are you certain this was rated? Maybe it was just scored as a Forfeit win? There is a difference.
Not 100%, but I remember seeing the crosstable and being upset that the game was rated. I knew the difference.
It seems likely that the TD wasn’t sure if the player was going to show or not, so he paired the player against his wife, who wasn’t really a player in the tournament. That way, if the guy doesn’t show, no “real” player has to sit around for a forfeit win, but if he does show, he still gets a game.
Bill Smythe