By the time he was stripped of British nationality in 1935, Mohammed Zakaria el-Hindi was well-known to authorities in Port Said. In previous decades, he had faced charges of smuggling narcotics, running a brothel, assaulting police, and even insulting King Fuad. However, as a British subject with consular protection, el-Hindi was rarely convicted. A master at manipulating legal loopholes and exploiting jurisdictional gaps, el-Hindi once argued that he could not be held accountable for owning a hashish den as the court had previously deemed him unfit to possess property because he himself consumed hashish. As historians, what do we make of foreign subalterns such as el-Hindi? Scholars have traditionally viewed these subjects through the lens with which contemporary elites described them: criminals, degenerates, and threats to the "honor" of empire or the "nobility" of nation. Drawing on a combination of court cases, police reports, and periodicals, this paper explores the illicit activities of subaltern foreigners within the context of the tumultuous transition between imperial, colonial, and national sovereignty in Egypt. It argues that this transformation produced myriad gaps, ambiguities, and inconsistencies between overlapping legal systems that allowed informal networks of profit and power to proliferate. In particular, the interaction between Ottoman-era extraterritorial privileges and the country's convoluted colonial court system created lucrative opportunities for foreign subalterns as smugglers, drug dealers, and brothel owners. These informal economic activities helped such subjects navigate an economic and political system closely controlled by colonial officials and increasing contested by local elites. However, they also invoked the ire of both British and Egyptian authorities. For the nationalist intelligentsia, such subalterns served as evidence of colonial malfeasance, obstacles to ongoing state-building efforts, and ideal foreign foils for an emerging national subject. On the other hand, British authorities considered them threats to the colonial system and severed ties with these pernicious proteges by deporting or stripping them of consular protection. In examining the exploits of el-Hindi and his contemporaries, this work details the development of the informal economy in early twentieth century Egypt. It contends that this set of social relations and illicit practices emerged as a dialectical response to the structures of local governance and, in turn, shaped the country's economy and institutions throughout the interwar period.