You’re Home, Making Money, and Traveling. Did Probation Approve It?

Your business is making money. You’re meeting clients, considering an investment, and planning a trip with your family. After years of dealing with a federal case, you want to make decisions without asking permission.

Then your probation officer calls about a trip you took, a business you started, or an account you didn’t disclose.

What could you hand your lawyer? The email approving the travel? The business description you submitted before you opened? Financial reports showing the income and where it went?

Or would your lawyer learn about the arrangement while reading the violation petition?

When I tell people to build a release plan, these are the decisions I want them thinking about. You may have money, a home, and people who want to do business with you. You need to know which decisions require permission and what you must disclose.

He Was So Close

A man from Los Angeles, my hometown, called me this week. His probation officer is starting proceedings to send him back to federal prison.

Look at what he’d been through. Five years ago, federal agents raided his home at six in the morning. He hired counsel, posted bond, pleaded guilty, and got sentenced. The DOJ put out press releases. The banks dropped him. People he’d known for years stopped calling. He went to prison, worked to get out early, survived the halfway house, finished home confinement, and made it to supervised release.

Then he traveled outside his district without permission. He got caught.

Five years of grinding through every stage of the system, and he’s back where he was the morning of the raid, wondering whether he’s going to prison.

I recorded a short video about his call: Watch the video.

A weekend in Vegas. A client meeting in another state. Your daughter’s tournament. You can afford the flight, the hotel is available, and your calendar is open. You book it.

Did you get permission?

That was the question the man who called me needed to answer before he left.

Thousands of Supervised Release Cases End in Revocation

On October 15, 2026, the U.S. Sentencing Commission released data on 9,326 supervised release revocations from the first six months of fiscal year 2026. In 55.2% of them, the most serious violation was Grade C, a category that includes certain crimes and violations of other supervision conditions.

The median time from the start of supervision to revocation was 18 months.

A year and a half. You may have spent those months rebuilding a business, earning income, and getting your family through what happened. You don’t want to explain to them that you could return to prison because you decided a travel restriction didn’t matter.

Read the Conditions That Affect Your Business and Money

Get your judgment and any orders modifying your conditions. Go through them with your lawyer and discuss how they affect the work you plan to do.

Some people have conditions requiring approval for employment or restricting a business or profession. Financial conditions can require disclosure and approval before taking on credit. These requirements depend on what the court imposed in your case.

Put the proposed transactions in front of your lawyer. You want to form an LLC. A former colleague wants you to consult. A bank offers a line of credit. Your spouse wants you involved in a company they own.

What needs approval? What needs disclosure? Who will submit it, and when?

Don’t wait until you’ve signed the documents to find out.

A banker approving your loan does not answer whether your supervision conditions permit you to take it. Your accountant may have no idea what the judge ordered. Give the professionals helping you the information they need.

Put the Business You Intend to Run in Your Release Plan

“I’m going back into consulting” leaves a lot unanswered.

Who will pay you? For what work? Will you receive a salary, commissions, equity, or distributions? Will you handle client money? Who are your partners? Does the work involve the industry where your offense occurred?

Write it down before you start.

If your conditions require approval, submit the proposed work and get an answer before accepting the engagement. If the arrangement changes, ask what needs to be reported or approved.

That matters when an engagement grows. You begin as a consultant, then accept equity. A client asks you to manage funds. A partner wants you to sign a personal guarantee. You may view each step as part of running a company. Review it against your conditions before agreeing.

Keep the business description you submitted, the response, and any limits attached to the approval. Your lawyer should be able to compare what you proposed with what you did.

Don’t Treat Credit as a Decision Between You and the Bank

You’ve used credit to run businesses for years. You know the lender. You have collateral. You expect to repay the money.

If your conditions require probation’s approval, none of that replaces the approval.

The federal courts’ sample financial conditions include restrictions on new credit charges and additional lines of credit without permission. Read the language in your order with your lawyer before applying or borrowing. uscourts.gov

Put anticipated financing in your release plan. A business line, a credit card, an equipment loan, a refinance. Explain what you expect to need and ask how to request it.

“Everyone borrows money to run a business” won’t establish that you followed your conditions.

An Account in Someone Else’s Name Deserves a Conversation

You work in your spouse’s company. Revenue goes into the company account. The company pays some household expenses. You receive a salary, and profits remain in the business.

What have you disclosed about that arrangement?

Don’t decide that the account is irrelevant because your name isn’t on it. Ask your lawyer what you must report about ownership, access, compensation, and expenses paid on your behalf.

For example, the Central District of California’s published conditions address records for accounts a person can access, including business and trust accounts. They include approval requirements concerning accounts and asset transfers.

If you control money, receive a benefit, or have an interest in a business, explain the arrangement to your lawyer. Let them help you meet the disclosure requirements. Don’t leave them to reconstruct it after probation finds something you omitted.

And don’t hide money. A company, trust, or relative’s account should not become your explanation for why you left income or assets off a required disclosure.

Plan the Travel Before You Promise to Attend

A client wants you in Nashville next week. A conference invites you to speak. Your family books a vacation.

Build time for permission into those plans.

Ask your officer what they need for a travel request. Keep the itinerary, purpose, dates, destination, and response. Read any limits attached to the approval.

A request in an inbox is a request. Don’t interpret silence as permission.

If travel is part of your work, discuss that before accepting the job or engagement. Your lawyer can help address conditions that interfere with the proposed work. You don’t want to promise a client you’ll attend and use that commitment as the reason you left without approval.

Keep a Record While Business Is Going Well

I came home in 2009 and reported to a federal probation officer. I’d been writing every day since October 12, 2008, starting with a handwritten blog at Taft. When I asked for approval to work with people who had felony convictions and to travel the country speaking on ethics, my officer could read what I’d been doing.

He approved the work and the travel. I got permission for every one of those trips before I left.

Keep the documents connected to your work and finances. Business approvals, contracts, ownership disclosures, financial reports, restitution receipts, credit approvals, and travel permissions should be available when you need them.

If you submit a description of a new consulting engagement, save it. If your officer asks for more information, keep the exchange and what you supplied. When your compensation changes, document how you addressed the reporting requirements.

Include the work you do beyond earning money. If you teach, volunteer, complete courses, or help others prepare for release, keep records someone can verify.

You want your lawyer to have evidence of how you spent your time and met your obligations before a violation was alleged.

Can That Record Help if You Face a Violation?

It can. The Guidelines commentary to §7C1.6 allows courts to consider compliance and adjustment under supervision when choosing a sentence within the applicable revocation range. Probation has limited discretion concerning reporting some minor Grade C violations, and courts can consider alternatives when the law permits.

Consider a hypothetical dispute over a business disclosure. One person has the description submitted to probation, the approval, financial reports, and emails asking how to report a change in compensation. Another person disclosed none of the arrangement.

The facts need examination in both cases. But the first person has documents their lawyer can use to establish what was disclosed, what was approved, and where the disagreement began.

A record won’t excuse hiding money or erase an unauthorized trip. It may help your lawyer show that an alleged violation occurred during a period of documented compliance, rather than as part of repeated concealment or disregard for the conditions.

If Probation Alleges a Violation

Contact us so we can review what happened and help you prepare a response.

If the issue involves travel, gather the request, response, itinerary, and dates. For a business dispute, pull the description you submitted, approvals, contracts, ownership records, and payments. For credit, include the application, loan documents, and correspondence with probation.

We want to see your history on supervision, too. What have you disclosed? Which requests received approval? Have you submitted financial reports and made restitution payments? What work have you documented since coming home?

Those records give us something to use when advocating for you and coordinating with your attorney. If you’ve spent eighteen months meeting your obligations, we want probation and the court to see those eighteen months alongside the alleged violation.

Join Our Webinar

If you’re returning to business, planning travel, or considering a loan, join our webinar. Bring your questions about supervised release and what to include in your release plan.

Justin Paperny