With the winter storm quickly approaching the east coast, some entrepreneurial kids saw a chance to make a little money – and help their neighbors.

“Matt Molinari and his friend, both [high school] seniors from Bridgewater, were going door-to-door advertising their snow shoveling services in advance of the storm,” CBS 2 reports.

Then suddenly, they “kind of saw like a spotlight, like a police spotlight,” Molinari says.

He and his friends were stopped by the police when they crossed over into neighboring Bound Brook.

“Police were alerted after someone called to report a suspicious person,” according to CBS 2.

“We weren’t looking to break the law. We just didn’t know the law,” Molinari insists.

And yet, that’s exactly what they’re being accused of.

“‘They need a permit, unpermitted solicitation is not allowed,’” Molinari says, recalling what the police told them.

“Are you kidding me? Our generation does nothing but complain about his generation being lazy and not working for their money,” a resident who witnessed the boys being questioned by police wrote on Bound Brook NJ Events’ Facebook page, according to the Courier News of Bridgewater.

“Here’s a couple kids who take the time to print up flyers, walk door to door in the snow, and then shovel snow for some spending money. And someone calls the cops and they’re told to stop?”

But while the police say they were doing it for the kids’ safety, they didn’t address the permit issue.

“We don’t make the laws but we have to uphold them,” Police Chief Michael Jannone tells the paper. “This was a state of emergency. Nobody was supposed to be out on the road.”

“The cops were nice about it. They weren’t jerks. They were trying to make sure everything is OK,” Molinari says.