running your code through the debugger we see this

  DB<1> x @lines
0  "\cM"
1  "\cM"
2  "\cM"
3  "\cM"
4  "VisionForum.com Stats for AvantGo\cM"
5  "\cM"
6  "\cM"
7  "\cM"
8  "\cM"
9  "\cM"
10  "VisionForum.com Stats\cM"
11  "2:00:43 PM - December 21, 2001\cM"
12  "\cM"
13  "Number of Shoppers: 93\cM"
14  "\cM"
15  "\cM"
16  "\cM"
17  "Today's Orders: 43\cM"
18  "Today's Gross Sales: \$4,435.63\cM"
19  "\cM"
20  "Average Order Size: \$103.15\cM"
21  "\cM"
22  "\cM"
23  "\cM"
24  "\cM"
[download]

so you'll need to chop off those Ctrl-M's one by one or change your split to:

my @lines = split /\r\n/, $plain_text;
[download]

-derby