TRADING standards officers in Hartlepool are urging businesses to ignore requests for compliment slips to help a young child with cancer.
The appeal, which arrives by letter or fax, asks people to send business cards or compliment slips to an address in Surrey. It also asks people to send the correspondence to ten business acquaintances.
Ian Harrison, trading standards officer at Hartlepool Borough Council, said the chain letter should be ignored.
He said: "There was a genuine appeal in 1990 by a boy called Craig Shergold, who was suffering from leukaemia and asked people to send enough compliment slips to get him into the Guinness Book of Records.
"Fortunately, Craig is now recovered and the appeal has ended. However, either deliberately or by mistake, chain letters are still being circulated requesting compliment slips or business cards for the names of Craig John, John Craig and John Richards.
"We know businesses in Hartlepool are still receiving letters.
"Anyone who does receive one should throw it away to help break the chain."
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