1) Please post "the script". We'll need to check which program is expanding the asterisks (Shell or FTP ?).
2) If you have Shell access on the FTP server, while in the target directory please post the output from these commands which are designed to make invisible characters visible:
ls -lab
ls -la | sed -n l
Please always post directory listings, program code and program output in CODE tags.
3) What Operating Systems and versions are you running on the source and target servers?
4) What Shell do you use?
5) If you are using anything other than the "ftp" which comes with your Operating System please specify what FTP package you have installed.
6) Do any of the filenames contain space characters or other non-alphanumeric characters, or are any of the filenames very long? It is easy to create a file on a unix or MSDOS computer which has a name which is invalid in FTP.