Data center expansion in Illinois brings economic promises and energy cost concerns

Illinois data centers could bring billions in investment and substantial property tax revenue over the next decade. A new report also warns of trade-offs, including higher electricity costs and concerns about the limited number of permanent jobs.

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Photo: Mikhail Nilov/PEXELS

A study of Illinois' expanding data center industry projects thousands of jobs and millions in local tax revenue, while raising questions about energy demand, public subsidies and long-term economic benefits.

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Ben Szalinski & Maggie Dougherty
Capitol News Illinois

SPRINGFIELD — A new study predicts data centers expected to be built in Illinois over the next decade would create thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in new property tax revenue.

But many are skeptical the touted benefits will live up to their promises or outweigh the environmental and energy burdens. The study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute projected that $57 billion worth of new data center investments through 2035 will create 121,000 jobs. Most of those would be temporary construction and other jobs throughout the economy, with just 2,800 of them direct, permanent positions.

Read the report

After lawmakers failed to pass data center regulations in the spring session and Gov. JB Pritzker paused the state’s data center tax incentive program, a comprehensive study was needed to help guide policymakers on how to address residents’ concerns, according to Frank Manzo, an economist at ILEPI, a labor-backed research organization that “promotes thoughtful economic growth for businesses and working families.”

“There’s currently a trust deficit amongst the public, and Illinois can ensure responsible development of data centers to address that deficit, and we’ve come up with possible ways to do that,” Manzo said.

Recognizing the growing public distrust of data centers and concerns over their heavy water and energy consumption, the report put forth 10 policy proposals that it says could protect residents while preserving the state's competitive position to attract data center development. Many were in line with a policy plan that stalled in Springfield in the spring, aiming to put guardrails on an industry while still promoting economic development.

“A moratorium sends investment to neighboring states," Manzo said, adding that clear standards and guardrails “give developers certainty and can protect ratepayers.”

The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity estimated that, as of 2025, data centers received an estimated tax break value that exceeded $660 million.

Data centers and property taxes

There are already more than 240 planned or active data centers in Illinois, or 19 per 1 million residents.

The report found that data centers would also supply nearly $300 million in annual property tax revenue once operational, allowing local governments to reduce property taxes for residents by 3-10% if no tax abatements are offered.

Manzo said the impact of a data center on local property taxes would depend on its size, with larger ones eating more of the bill. He said the impact could also be especially strong in more rural and small counties, such as DeKalb.

The report shows that in 2024 while the tech company Meta paid $31 million in property taxes on their new data center in the county, average property taxes in DeKalb County increased by about 2% compared to 6% on average across the state.

“Every local community has to have their own voice and their own will expressed in these,” Robert Bruno, a University of Illinois professor who coauthored the report with ILEPI, said in an interview. “But as a possible source of revenue that could achieve a lot of good, it’s sizeable and it is a pretty reliable collective source of revenue for schools.”

But the city also reduced the property taxes paid on the sprawling Meta data center, lessening what the impact could have been for homeowners, according to Kristan Wong Karinen, a researcher at Good Jobs First, a national policy organization that advocates against corporate subsidies.

“Abating the taxes doesn’t help you at all,” she said, pointing to Illinois’ law limiting how much local governments can raise property taxes in a single year. “It just hurts any kind of gain you could have had from it.”

One of the report’s recommendations was to ban local property tax breaks so data centers help reduce local tax burdens by a greater amount.

Jobs created would be mostly temporary

Most data centers don’t employ many people after they are built. With 2,800 permanent positions expected to be created by the total $57 billion investment, data center developers are collectively spending $20.2 million per permanent job.

“If this were completely private money, it would be a different story,” Anthony Elmo, another Good Jobs First researcher, said. “These taxpayer dollars need to actually incentivize good long-term jobs and they’re not.”

Illinois Economic Policy Institute researchers said many of the jobs created by the data center projects pay well, including six-figure construction jobs. Thirteen projects in 2020 and 2021 created 8,000 construction jobs with wages over $100,000, according to the report. The report also found data centers would create 41,751 consumer-demand-induced jobs over the next decade throughout the economy. These are jobs that range from local restaurant workers to factory jobs at places that manufacture construction materials.

Elmo questioned whether the growth of data centers will continue to be robust given the public backlash and likelihood they will face more regulations.

But Manzo said the counter argument is that these jobs could go to a different state — something Elmo said could happen anyway as technology progresses.

“As they are able to build their technology and build their ability to run data centers remotely and without permanent positions, how many of those permanent position will go away?” Elmo said.

Energy implications

The report acknowledges that a tradeoff for those job and property tax benefits is the increasing cost of energy driven by power-hungry, always-on data centers. The authors estimate the impact to average residential bills would be around an extra $12 per month, or $150 a year.

The report’s estimate was based on what researchers called a mid-level scenario, in which new data centers would add 6.5 gigawatts of energy demand to Illinois’ grid by 2035 — enough to power millions of homes.

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Photo: Winston Chen/Unsplash

Concerns about rising energy costs, environmental stress, tax incentives and public transparency are major issues for community residents while city leaders quietly negotiate with data center developers.

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That scenario, researchers said, would increase electric system costs overall by almost 10%. Other projections estimate the impact will be much higher.

Data from PJM, the regional transmission organization that manages energy flows in northeastern Illinois, forecasts that electricity demand from data centers will grow by 10.7 GW by 2035 in ComEd’s territory alone, though all projects are not guaranteed to come online. The rest of the state is on the MISO grid, which is expected to see peak demand increase by 35% by 2035 across the 15 states in its territory, driven largely by data center development in states like Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Analysis conducted by the National Resource Defense Council last year predicted that average families in the PJM territory would see prices increase by as much as $70 per month by 2028.

Rising electricity costs don’t just affect residential bills but can also hurt businesses, Citizens Utility Board spokesperson Jim Chilsen said, as consumers have less disposable income.

“One thing that's horrible for the economy is high electric bills, because when consumers are pouring all their money into escalating electric bills, they don't have money to use to spark the economy in other places,” he said.

Policy recommendations

Many of the proposed policy recommendations are in line with the POWER Act, a bill that would have made data centers secure their own renewable energy supply and required water-use permits and transparency reporting, among other provisions.

The report also recommended a statewide ban on nondisclosure agreements with developers because they harm trust with the public, who are often left asking questions about data center projects that can’t be answered because of the agreements. The POWER Act would also ban such agreements.

Lawmakers didn’t pass the POWER Act in the spring legislative session, but advocates are optimistic the bill will advance during the fall veto session. Pritzker, who advocates criticized for a lack of engagement on the issue last spring, called on lawmakers to act last week.

The report also proposed limiting the incentives the state gives to data center developers. Researchers suggested raising the investment threshold and number of jobs that a data center creates to qualify for a state tax break, while also reducing the number of years the incentive lasts.

Christine Nannicelli oversees renewable energy policy at the Sierra Club of Illinois, which has advocated for stronger data center regulations. She said Illinois needs to prioritize rigorous standards, not just incentives for companies that choose to bring their own renewable energy and create jobs.

“The rubber hits the road when we talk about, are we incentivizing good behavior or are we going to require good behavior?" Nannicelli said. "This isn't about offering fluffy tax incentives to do the right thing. We need to really raise the bar for this industry as a whole."

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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TAGGED: Illinois data center economic impact, Illinois data center property tax revenue, data center electricity costs in Illinois, Illinois data center jobs through 2035, Illinois data center regulation proposals

Scammers pose as federal agents in $1.8 million Southern Illinois fraud

A 78-year-old Marion woman lost access to nearly $1.8 million after scammers posing as technology support workers and financial fraud investigators convinced her to move money and purchase gold bars.

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Soph Levinson & William Mize
Saluki Local Reporting Lab

Molly Parker
Capitol News Illinois

BENTON — A 78-year-old southern Illinois woman was alarmed when a popup message appeared on her computer in April warning that it had been compromised. She Googled the number for Microsoft support and called the first option that appeared in her search results.

The man on the other end of the line told her his name was Mike Williams, identifying himself as a supervisor on Microsoft’s fraud prevention team. He gave her the bad news first: Her computer had been hacked, he said, and her sensitive data potentially compromised.

But he had a solution: If she followed his directions and gave him remote access to her computer, he could look inside and determine the extent of the damage.

She did as instructed.

Unfortunately, the supposed Microsoft supervisor told her, it was bad.

That was the beginning of an elaborate, monthslong scheme that would lead the Marion woman, identified only as D.B. in federal court records, to move nearly $1.8 million from her investment accounts. She was instructed to move the money into money market accounts, federal court records show, and spend more than $823,000 on gold bars that she believed a federal agent needed her to turn over for safekeeping while authorities worked to secure her compromised accounts.

Photo provided by Capitol News Illinois

Two 1-kilogram gold bars worth about $272,000 shown in a photo from the Homeland Security Investigations prior to D.B. packaging them as directed by “Kevin Jones” during a video call. The box was later filled with sandbags before they were delivered as part of a sting operation.

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But the agent wasn’t real, and the first load of gold bars she handed over in the Marion Walmart parking lot, worth $318,459, is gone, Kathleen Howard, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, told a federal judge in Benton last week.

One of the fraudsters admitted guilt in the conspiracy.

Those who duped the Marion woman and others they targeted across the country, including the defendant who appeared in court to accept a plea deal that day, did so knowing their victims were “elderly and otherwise vulnerable,” Howard told the judge.

Gold-bar scams on the rise

In September 2025, the FBI warned that it was seeing an increase in what it described as “gold bar and bulk cash courier scams” that can unfold in a variety of creative, insidious, and increasingly sophisticated ways that weaponize trust and fear.

Criminals pose as tech-support workers, financial institution representatives and agents of the FBI, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Treasury Department. In this case, the Marion woman believed the man who greeted her in the Walmart parking lot in June was an agent of the U.S. Treasury.

The precious metals industry has also taken notice.

Gold can be a smart investment alongside traditional portfolios, but it’s also attractive to scammers because it’s hard to trace once it changes hands, said Paul Cox, director of sales for California-based Freedom Gold USA. It may be natural to wonder how someone could fall for these scams, but Cox said that until you’ve seen one up close, it’s hard to comprehend just how manipulative they can be. He’s seen smart people duped. Those who threaten to plant illegal material are particularly effective, he said: “People will do anything the minute they feel fear.”

They may also use the opposite tact, building a close rapport over weeks with vulnerable seniors who come to trust them explicitly. Cox recalled one woman who had already lost about $50,000 in a gold-bar scam when she was approached by real police officers hoping to put an end to it. Yet the woman remained so convinced by the scammers that she doubted the sworn officers and chose to keep working with those stealing from her instead, he said.

The FBI reported that between 2023 and May 2025, it had documented more than 1,700 bulk cash and gold-bar scams, resulting in losses of more than $186 million.

An NDA, a tracker phone and daily check-ins

The scammers started working right away to get their hooks into D.B. and separate the Marion woman from the hundreds of thousands of dollars in her nest egg.

After D.B. followed Williams’ instructions to give him remote access to her computer, he was able to learn about D.B. 's Edward Jones Investments account, according to a sworn affidavit by a Homeland Security Investigations agent, who worked the case with Marion police and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Williams then transferred the elderly woman to another man, who identified himself as Kevin Jones, and who claimed he worked in Edward Jones’ fraud prevention department.

Jones told D.B. that her Edward Jones account had indeed been compromised — and protecting it would require extreme measures. He then had her sign a purported nondisclosure agreement in which D.B. agreed to keep the operation a secret from family and law enforcement. Jones mandated that D.B. maintain regular contact with him, asking that she send “good morning” and “good night” texts every day. She was provided a “tracker phone” that Jones monitored.

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Photo:Homeland Security/Capitol News Illinois

Six 1-ounce and 20 100-gram gold bars valued at just over $318,000.

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Jones later told D.B. that in order to protect her money, D.B. needed to convert her assets to gold. She did as instructed and moved $1.8 million from her Edward Jones accounts into a money market account. She then spent $318,459 on six one-ounce bars and 20 100-gram bars. Jones instructed D.B. how to package the gold for transportation, and then gave her instructions for handing the gold bars over to a U.S. Treasury agent.

She was instructed to meet the agent on June 8 — 67 days after she first made contact with the scammers. They’d meet in the Marion Walmart parking lot, D.B. was told, and after exchanging the code word “black bug” she should hand over the gold bars.

The exchange went as planned, and the scammers were pleased. Not long after, Jones began instructing her to convert even more of her assets into gold — this time just over a half-million dollars. She did that, too.

D.B., though, started to grow suspicious. The federal seal on the documents Jones sent her after handing over the gold bars didn’t look real. That’s when she finally contacted the Marion Police Department, federal court records show. D.B. believed them when officers told her she’d been duped.

A sting turns the tables on the scammers

For months, the scammers had called the shots. This time, they would be the ones set up.

With the help of Marion police, another drop was arranged with Jones, who once again guided D.B. as she packaged two kilograms of gold bars worth about $272,000. On July 7, Jones told D.B. to meet the agent at the Cornerstone Church in Marion near Sam’s Club. And once again, he told her, she should exchange a password with the U.S. Treasury agent.

Federal prosecutors say law enforcement watched Ruoyu Lian approach the elderly woman outside a Marion church later that day. He exchanged a new secret code word with her — this time, “poker queen” — and took the box he believed contained two kilograms of gold. Instead, it was filled with sandbags.

Investigators arrested Lian moments later. Just 12 days later, he was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the conspiracy. He’s the only one facing charges to date connected to D.B.’s lost investments.

Photo: Franklin County/Capitol News Illinois

Mugshot of Ruyou Lian provided by the Franklin County Jail, where he’s been incarcerated since his July arrest and remains pending his sentencing hearing in January.

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On Sept. 24, Lian, 30, of Flushing, New York, sat in federal court in Benton wearing an orange jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles shackled. Lian told U.S. District Judge Phil Gilbert that he understood only a little English. Appearing via Zoom, a Mandarin interpreter translated the words of the judge, prosecutor and his own attorney for him through headphones, then translated Lian’s responses back to the court.

He pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, offenses that could carry sentences of up to 20 years and $250,000 in fines each. No family or supporters appeared in court with him.

Defense attorney: To ring leaders, ‘Lian is expendable’

Federal court records make clear that Lian didn’t operate alone, but his lawyer, former Jackson County State’s Attorney Joe Cervantez, said prosecutors painted a picture that made Lian appear to have a more active role than Cervantez believes he actually did. Cervantez said they pointed to his New York apartment and the fact he drove a Porsche to suggest he’d benefitted financially from this scheme or others.

But Lian shared the apartment with his girlfriend and another roommate, drove an older, four-door model Porsche, and his father still provided him financial support so he could make ends meet, Cervantez said. Lian, he said, worked as a sushi chef in New York.

He said Lian became acquainted with people in New York he didn’t previously know, at a New York establishment frequented by people who shared his cultural background. Over time, Cervantez said, they convinced Lian to play the role of the U.S. Treasury agent — making him the scheme’s “courier,” and thereby putting him at the greatest risk of arrest for little reward.

He received only a relatively small payment — amounting to about two weeks’ pay at his restaurant job — to fly to southern Illinois and collect the gold from D.B., Cervantez said.

Cervantez said that, unfortunately, he believes Lian’s arrest will do little to deter such schemes.

“Lian is expendable to them,” he said of the fraud ring leaders. “At the end of the day, everybody in the scheme is still on to the next one.”

In exchange for Lian’s guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to pursue a sentence within federal guidelines, which Cervantez said ranges from 40 to 52 months in federal prison. The plea agreement preserves Cervantez’s ability to argue for a sentence below that range. In addition to any prison time or fines, Lian will be required to pay more than $318,000 in restitution for the gold taken from D.B. and never recovered, Howard, the assistant U.S. attorney, told the court. Judge Gilbert told Lian, a Chinese citizen and legal permanent resident, that he will be deported after completing his sentence.

His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 14.

The Saluki Local Reporting Lab is a special project of the SIU School of Journalism and Advertising and is designed to give students from diverse backgrounds practical reporting experience while providing news coverage to underserved communities.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.