Something sounds fishy

I bought my car last year on 01/28/04 and it was registered on that date. I am used to car registrations lasting one year so I was expecting to renew this month (Feb). Well about 2 weeks ago B is pulled over for expired tags. It appears we were only registered for 6 months and the registration expired in November. I understand that Motor Vehicles is not guaranteed to send us a renewal notice but since I was expecting the tags not to expire until a year later, I never noticed what was actually on the plates. The registration goes to my Dad’s office so I was waiting for him to call me to pick up my mail. The renewal notice was never sent to us, with my Dad having surgery, and in the hospital at that time, our minds were on other things. We were okay with missing the registration and B went online on Feb. 7th to renew. On our receipt, it states we will receive the new tags in 5 business days. It is now the 28th of February and we have no tags. I called my cousin who works for MVD and she said we would have to go down and pick up the tags. B and my Dad went down to MVD today and they were told that they could not get our tags, as our car was not registered due to ‘someone’ requesting a refund on the 17th of Feb. They could not tell us who this person was but they do have our money! Talk about something not sounding right. I am wondering if the previous owner has anything to do with this since we never got the original renewal letter to begin with. However, the state does show our address as the mailing address.

How fishy does this sound?