Factions Help (With the Tag displayed)

Hello, let me jump right in. I am running a bukkit server 1.4.5 with Factions Bukkit v1.6.9.3. For some reason when a user creates a faction the letters "a" and "r" appear at the begining and end of the Faction title Tag. For example I made a Faction by the name of "test" and here is how it is displayed to the client:

a**test r [Group]~[Username]: [Message]

So as you can see everything is like it's supposed to be. However the "a" and "r" in the faction tag should not be there. Now let me stop you from what your thinking. Somewhere in the config file I add the letters "a" and "r" in the tag settings. Not true I have double and triple checked. Including useing the "find" feature of Notebook++ and looking at every "a" and "r" there was in the config :/

**test [Group]~[Username]: [Message]

I have in fact got a new Factions folder and this is still there. Does this mean it is a bug? Or could it be another plugin that deals with Chat formatting. To help you in that area here are all the plugins I have that do anything to the Format of the chat.

CloneZ
EssentialsChat
PermissionsEx
Factions

Any help is most appretiated. Thanks,
-Zero