It's one of those crazy Windows/Linux things.
I had to update the cron job a few days ago, and I created the instructions in a Windows text editor.
Although there was no way to "see" it, there was a ^M carriage return character that LINUX saw after my password. I actually checked for this in my text editor, of course I couldn't see it.
Luckly my host admin took a look in the right place, saw it, fixed it, and all my mail went out.
Bob