Odd query behavior

Hello,

I've come across an odd situation. I've had access to a database where a the following happens:

" SELECT * FROM table WHERE name LIKE 'abc%' "    returns 2 rows...

but...

" SELECT * FROM table WHERE name IN (SELECT name FROM table WHERE name LIKE 'abc%') "  returns 0 rows...

I've also tried doing a join on the column to another table that has what appears to be the same data, and the join comes out with zero rows. Weirder yet, I took the hash of both of the values and it came out identical.

Now, I know the first thing you'll ask is if you can get a copy of the data to re-produce it, and the problem is, I got a  copy of the data in question, and loaded into another server and it works fine. Both queries return 2 rows.

I do know that server it was running on was not an english server, but don't know the exact language. The database uses a UTF8 encoding though, so I don't know what that would make any difference.

Any ideas about things I should be looking at?

Thanks

Dan