LANCASHIRE County Council is urging people to ignore a chain letter that promises to make the recipient at least £40,000.

The letter promises the reader that if the instructions are followed "you will receive £40,000 in cash within the next 60 days -- guaranteed."

This, the letter adds, will "give you the indescribable, overwhelming sense of certainty, belief and conviction in the system."

Recipients are then invited to follow "six proven steps", the first of which is to send a £10 note to a complete stranger.

After posting a tenner to a stranger, the reader is then asked to put themselves at the bottom of a list of six people.

The next stage is to get 200 photocopies of the letter and send them out to people's addresses taken from telephone directories. These people will, eventually, start to send £10 notes to the sender.

The letter said: "This works like the National Lottery, except its more fun because you are guaranteed to win", but for one man in Earby, the balls failed to drop.

He said: "I sent £10 off last year and have had nothing back since. I haven't a clue where it came from and I have thrown mine in the bin."

The letter has been circulating in the Burnley area for the past month. It includes the names and addresses of six people in the Burnley and Pendle.

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council's Trading Standards Office said the letters should be thrown in the bin. He added: "This is an example of what we call a chain letter. They work on the basis that people who receive them will send them on, but they are basically just another form of pyramid scheme and they always collapse at some point.

"The thing to do is destroy them. Don't send any money -- unless you are prepared to lose."