Stop talking to third-party recruiters. If you have a LinkedIn account, or resumes posted on any job boards, you will get more spam from them than you will ever need regarding job leads.

But should you be so foolish as to respond, you will find that you have to do twice as much work to get to the person who can say yes, and they will wind up giving some of your money to someone else. And the recruiter is so desperately afraid of getting cut out that they will hide information from you and from the employer, or even lie outright. And that can bite you later.

Every company out there is fully capable of hiring a person that will add to their profits without paying someone else to do it. The key is to find the person that can say yes and talk to them, without the flappers and gatekeepers interposing themselves.

The only companies that will make a preemptive strike based on a background check are required to do so by contract or by government regulations, mostly to protect against data breaches. Banks, companies with access to medical records, and defense contractors, mostly.

The greatest strike against you is not, in fact, your felony. It is that you are a whistleblower that embarrassed your employer. You can explain that your felony was a result of choosing between breaking the law and violating your own ethics, and get some understanding there, but the instant they discover that you cost a former employer any significant amount of money for lawyers and PR firms, you will be judged "not a good fit for this position".

EDIT: OP was not employed by Sylint, so I guess this is not quite so bad.

Companies work with recruiters because they would rather touch that sleaze and clean it off later than to manage their own bozo filters. There is nothing particularly special about what they do--they are specialist salesmen. Their value lies in knowing a bare minimum about their product (you), and in knowing how to sell a pig in a poke to someone with a vague taste for bacon, or perhaps a ham sandwich. In short, they know who is hiring, or who might be soon.

But this month, everyone is hiring, or at least willing to consider it. First, drive around an office park near your home, writing down the names of companies. Next, find websites for those companies. If you can't find a website, you don't necessarily need to cross it off your list. The first thing any tech person would do is get their company a domain name and static home page with minimal business information. Those companies won't hire you, but they might be willing to do a consulting contract with you to get their name and logo on the web.

For the rest, check to see if they have a jobs and careers section, where you can apply directly. That's just to see what they really need today. The more non-tech people they hire now, the more tech people they will need to support them. What you are really searching for is direct contact information for one or more technical middle managers, and the CTO, CIO, or COO of the company. This information is often available just by cold-calling the main business number for the company and asking for it. I know a person who had a job doing just that, except it was for the printing and paper industry.

Once you know who has the authority to hire, call that person and try to determine if they have any immediate need for tech people. If they do, try to find out what skills they would need to have. You are now doing exactly the same thing most recruiters are doing. Go down your whole list, and apply directly to the companies that are hiring, with the person who has the authority to say yes. If you can somehow manufacture a social link to that person, your chances will improve dramatically.

If you never speak directly with someone who can hire you, you will never be hired. It's that simple.