Several companies in Brighton have been duped by a hoax chain letter which has been circulating the world for more than a decade.

The letter is an emotional appeal to help a seven-year-old boy with a terminal illness enter the Guinness Book of Records by collecting business compliments slips.

The hoax stems from the true case of a Craig Shergold, of Charlton, Surrey, who did have cancer and asked people to send him a record number of get well cards in 1989 and circulate the letter to ten colleagues.

Within years the appeal had brought in millions of cards and his family asked people to stop, especially since Craig went on to make a full recovery.

But pranksters have kept the chain going by changing the boy's name over the years.

The address has stayed the same and a spokeswoman for Royal Mail said the family was still receiving four or five bags of mail a week.

People are being fooled despite newspapers and television stations around the world warning about the letter.

The latest example calls the ill boy John Craggs and has hoodwinked a number of companies in the Brighton area.

Matt Bashford, who is the station manager at Juice FM, sent a compliments slip to the boy and passed the letter on as instructed.

When told about the hoax by The Argus, he said: "We were forwarded the letter from one of our suppliers and because of this we thought it was genuine. As a radio station we get a lot of requests for unusual things and I thought this was quite a nice idea.

"It never occurred to me it was a chain letter. I thought I was helping someone and feel quite let down. I wouldn't say I was angry, just annoyed.

John Grace, director of Autoscreen Network based in Hollingbury, Brighton, received the letter from colleagues in Northampton.

He said: "Deliberately starting something like this as a hoax seems incredible because they can't be making any money from it.

"It costs time and aggravation to send it on but you do it because it pulls on emotional strings."

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail told people sent similar chain letters to bin them.