If nobody will hire me, should I turn to crime to pursue a career in programming? I ask because if there's no legal entry-level jobs due to the oversaturation, I might have to go underground for it.

If you don’t have all of these things set up already… why the hell not?!?

Presumably, you have a 4 year CS degree, and not just some certificates from a certificate mill.

You realize any criminal organization you would want to go to work for as an alternative to a legitimate job, will want everything a legitimate job would want, plus some tradecraft, and an ability to not get caught on top of everything else, right?

Astrophotographer captures the heart of the Lagoon Nebula glowing below a cosmic Trifid (photo) - Space

Minimally, this would mean an internship after your first, second, and third years, which is almost a years worth of job experience.

If I’m not willing to hire you for my legitimate business, I sure as heck will not be willing to hire you for my criminal enterprise.

One or more letters of recommendation from one or more supervisors in each internship

Why is watching a man and a woman have sex considered perverted? It's how we all got here, it's what we do, I say if you want to watch porn then carry on!

You asked for a formal performance review equivalent AFTER getting the letters of recommendation

Have you considered military service?

You took those performance reviews to heart, and aimed some of your school curriculum at addressing any areas where your performance was less than stellar, and kept notes, so now you have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), both where you fell short in each internship,and a list of what you did to address your shortcomings

Adventure Calls from the Lost City of Un’Goro, Hearthstone’s Next Expansion - Blizzard Entertainment

You now have at least a small personal business network, and a network through your academics, within your CS department, which you can leverage to find your first post-graduation job

I suspect that unless your criminal activity involves something other than computers, you will have a hard time finding work as a criminal, as well.

Because you did not squander your internships, this also means that you have:

What would you do if you were lost at sea in the Florida Keys?