Illegal entrepreneurship in the rural is under researched and scrutinized, yet it occupies a distinctive space in entrepreneurship practice in terms of how it is construed and how it is enacted. This is a theoretical paper which provides a conceptual framework for defining 'ideal types' of illegal rural enterprise activity in order to better frame the phenomenon. Four types of enterprise activity are provided which suggest how the activities of illegal entrepreneurship in the rural can be categorized. This article is valuable to researchers and policymakers in that the framework suggests diversity in illegal rural enterprises which can manifest differing motives and modes of operation. (Published Abstract)