A West Seattle sixth-grader and two of his friends got a serious talking-to this week and were suspended for five days in a middle-school counterfeiting incident.

On Monday afternoon, a cafeteria worker at James Madison Middle School was counting the day's cash when she noticed a dollar bill that didn't look or feel like the real thing, said Seattle School District spokeswoman Patti Spencer. "Folks in the lunch room were alerted to watch out" for more phony bills, she said.

An assistant principal called Seattle police the next day after a sixth-grader tried to use one of the bogus bills to buy beef jerky from the school cafeteria, said police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.

He said a sixth-grade boy had used his aunt's computer to make 20 fake dollar bills. The boy brought the bills to school and gave 12 of them to his friends; police were able to collect eight of the bills, Whitcomb said.

Though officials with the King County Youth Services Center — the detention facility for juvenile offenders — declined to take the boys into custody, the King County Prosecutors' Office will review the case to determine if charges are warranted, said prosecutor's spokesman Dan Donohoe.

School officials sat the boys down for a discussion, Spencer said. The students' parents were called, and the boys were suspended for five days.

"We're hopeful the students will take this seriously and that it'll be a learning experience for them," she said.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com