I don't think there's a buildin way to do what you requested. But by using some of the text expressions you could invent your own method to achieve this with events.
I cooked up an example for you:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2306601/wildcards.cap
Enter the string you want tested in the editbox and click on the compare button. It will return either true or false. The text object named "Rule" holds your compare string with the wildcard characters (I used "$" as a wildcard). I'm sure this isn't the most elegant way to do this, but it appears to work fine.
I'm using a loop and some expressions. Seeing that this is your first post, I hope you can make sense of it all. You can always look up stuff on the Construct wiki.
And welcome to the community! Great avatar you have there...