What's the best way to appeal a ban? (Phas refugee)

Me and my gaming group decided to give this game a try and really enjoyed it. However, as busy adults we only get a few hours to game, once a week. Progression is not something that is in the cards for us anymore. And we never play with anyone but each other either. So we've always seen it as harmless to bump up our money and XP a little just so we have access to all of a game's content, otherwise we'd never get anywhere.

It's not even like I use cheats or mods, I just change the values in my save file (I don't mess with the game's files at all) to increase my money and XP. I did my math wrong on the XP and ended up with a crazy high level, and the next day I got a message that I'd been banned. If it's really important to the devs that we do things kosher I'll set the values back, but I just want a chance to plead my case. Otherwise we'll have to find another game.

Also, after acknowledging the ban I did boot up the game and it ran fine and I still had all my progress. I didn't start a mission but I was surprised I got that far. Is that normal for a ban? I've never been banned in a game before.