Finding "bad" emails with AS in Filemaker

I have a list of bounced emails that I want to purge from Filemaker and have found a (maybe) strange thing...

First, I know the email address exists in the FM stack and lives in cell 32

this is my script....

global TheList

tell application "FileMaker Pro"

tell application "BBEdit"

set TheList to {}

--set TheList to file "textList"

set TheList to the text of window 1

--set TheList to every word of TheList

end tell

-- set TheList to {[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]}

delete every request

repeat with i from 1 to the length of TheList

set newReq to create request

set cell 32 of newReq to item i of TheList

end repeat

find -- perform find requests

end tell

I run the script with no found records....however when i try to manually "find" a single email i get nothing unless - I "find" as literal text("") in filemaker.

Is there a way to perform an FM literal text "find" in a repeat loop?

TIA

Chas