Security fog · gaming cafés and VGT locations
They are doing four or five rooms a night. Your alarm is not what stops that.
Burglaries at Illinois video gaming locations have risen every year for three years running. The crews are organised, they work in minutes, and they are hitting multiple rooms in a night. Fog is the only control on the list that acts while they are still in the building.
Illinois Gaming Board figures, reported by the Chicago Sun-Times
The curve, three years running
Illinois Gaming Board records, reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, 20 January 2026 and 30 June 2026. By late June 2026 nearly fifty of that year’s break-ins had taken $10,000 or more, totalling over $1.5 million.
Read the Q4 number again. Nearly half of a full year’s burglaries landed in the last three months of it. This is not a flat background risk you can average across a year and budget for — it arrives in waves, and the wave is the part that takes the room apart.
What the police are describing
Masked, gloved, in and out in minutes
“They wear gloves, they all have masks, they’re in and out in minutes. They’re getting organized and they’re getting smart.”
Chicago Ridge Police Chief Jim Jarolimek, Chicago Sun-Times, 20 January 2026.
Crews come through the front glass with sledgehammers and pry bars and go straight for the terminals. One operator, describing the same crews to the Sun-Times: “They’re doing four, five places a night.” A Bensenville chief put the trend at “definitely on the rise.”
And it is worth being clear about who is coming. Asked about property crime at gaming locations, the Gaming Board’s own spokesperson said the obvious out loud: “We are not a first responder to burglaries or property crimes.” Your terminal operator does not respond either. The alarm calls the police, and the police arrive after.
Why a gaming room is the case fog was built for
Small room, fixed target, no time
- SMALL VOLUMEA gaming room is a few thousand cubic feet. One head fills it in seconds — this is the easiest kind of space in the world to fog properly, and the cheapest.
- THE TARGET DOES NOT MOVEFive or six terminals against a wall. Fog does not have to protect a whole building, only the corner that matters.
- CASH, NOT STOCKNothing to spoil, nothing to residue-test, no customer goods sitting out overnight. The objection that slows a retailer down does not apply here.
- CLOSED WHEN IT HAPPENSThese are overnight jobs in an empty room. No staff, no customers, no one to fog.
- THEY COME BACKA room that gave up cash once is on a list. Fog changes the answer to the second visit rather than just recording it.
The part most operators do not know
Your terminal operator may be able to pay for it
The usual objection to fog in a gaming room is not that it does not work. It is that the room is a thin-margin business and the capital has to come from somewhere.
IGB guidance on Rule 350(b)(3), January 2026
The Illinois Gaming Board has confirmed that a terminal operator may provide and pay for a security system covering the gaming area, and that the cost may be shared. That moves fog out of your capital budget and into a conversation with your TO.
Accel, J&J Ventures, Gold Rush, Lucky Lincoln, Lattner, Midwest SRO — every operator is watching the same burglary curve you are, and a burgled room is out of service and earning nothing for both of you.
We are happy to be in that conversation. Quote to you, quote to your terminal operator, or a single scope covering several of your rooms — if you run more than one location, the per-site cost falls sharply and there is one commissioning visit instead of four.
Cost-sharing arrangements are between you and your terminal operator, and are subject to the Gaming Board’s current rules and your own contract. We are not a party to either and this is not advice on your licence — confirm the position with your TO and, where it matters, your own counsel.
One room, one head, one afternoon
A gaming room is the fastest fog job there is. We will walk it, measure the volume, tell you what it takes, and tell you what your village requires before anything is ordered.
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