Heartless councilmen reduced a 5-year-old girl to tears by shutting down her homemade lemonade stand.
The little girl set up a stall selling the homemade drink to music lovers heading to Lovebox festival in East London on Saturday.
But the girl had her stand shut down by the local council and was slapped with the £150 ($195) fine.
Andre Spicer said his daughter burst into tears when enforcement officers from Tower Hamlets council arrived to say they were “trading without a permit” near their home in Mile End.
The dad, a professor at City, University of London, said: “People were so happy, they thought she was so cute and called her a ‘little grafter.’
“It’s not like she was trying to make a massive profit, this is just a 5-year-old kid trying to sell lemonade.
“She started screaming and crying. She sobbed all the way home and was telling me: ‘Dad, I’ve done a bad thing.’”
The professor said four officers stormed up to the table just 30 minutes after the pair had set up the stand, reading from a script.
He said: “When you’re 5, you think an authority figure is always right.
“She was very upset because she was proud of selling it and this really soured the experience.
“Things like this are common in America.
“When I shared our experience with my cousin who lives in Chicago, he told me this would be a national scandal.”
A spokeswoman for the local authority said: “We are very sorry that this has happened.
“We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense, and to use their powers sensibly. This clearly did not happen.
“The fine will be canceled immediately and we will be contacting Professor Spicer and his daughter to apologize.”
Spicer told his daughter they’d set up another stall when they had a permit but she replied: “No. It’s too scary.”
This comes weeks after council officers left two children in tears by banning their trampoline over health and safety fears.