From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsmall-timeˈsmall-time adjective → small-time crook/gangster etc —small-timer noun [countable]
Examples from the Corpus
small-time• Robert Burke, a Hartley regular, is Bill McCabe, a small-time conman who has just been dumped by his girl.• It was either small-time crookery or the docks, and I thought, well, the crookery's better, really.• a small-time drug dealer• It was not an astonishing one, in the context of a small-time drugs network.• Do you think we would have been better off if Dad had been a small-time failure.• Even small-time investors can place their money in venture capital funds traded on Wall Street.• The crimes were petty stuff, small-time marijuana, heroin started coming in.• Most of Jenkins' articles were about small-time police corruption.• What we are is a nation of small-time sinners, which is not per se unusual nor even particularly bad.• With the rise of the bond markets, the equity salesmen and traders had been reduced by comparison to small-time toll takers. 