You are tasked with cleaning up a database table called customer$\_$records that contains customer data. This table contains duplicate records where some fields are exact matches, while others may have discrepancies due to typos, trailing spaces, or similar issues. To rectify this, you are required to devise an SQL query that eliminates these duplicate records by utilizing wildcards for filtering. Note: when two records share the same first name but have different last names, these should be treated as distinct records rather than as duplicates with discrepancies.

Tables Schema as Below:

customer$\_$records

columnName dataType

customer$\_$id INT

first$\_$name VARCHAR$(50)$

last$\_$name VARCHAR$(50)$

email VARCHAR$(100)$

phone$\_$number VARCHAR$(20)$