On August 3, Rebecca — the A-share market's "first wig stock" — resumed trading under the new ticker designation ST Rebecca, with its daily price-limit band narrowed to 10%. Before that, the Henan Securities Regulatory Bureau's Administrative Penalty Prior Notice had already laid bare the books of this leader of the so-called "Global Wig Capital": funneling funds to the controlling shareholder, inflating cash balances, and violating information-disclosure rules. The company and six individuals — including the chairman, general manager, chairman of the board, chief financial officer and board secretary — were fined a combined total of more than 20 million yuan.
The Ledger of Fund Occupation
Rebecca's violations can be separated into two layers.
The first layer is how the money was taken out. From 2022 to June 2024, Rebecca and its wholly owned subsidiary Xuchang Rebecca Hair Products transferred funds to related parties including Henan Rebecca Holdings, constituting non-operating fund occupation. The amounts involved were roughly 1.146 billion yuan in 2022, 1.233 billion yuan in 2023, and 457 million yuan in the first half of 2024 — equivalent to 40.50%, 44.73% and 16.72% of the disclosed net assets for the respective periods. In other words, in the worst year, 2023, close to half of the company's net assets were tied up by related parties — and none of this appeared in the annual or interim reports for those three years.
The second layer is how it was concealed. From December 2022 to June 2024, Rebecca inflated its monetary funds by fabricating cash inflows and leaving inter-company fund movements off the books — roughly 229 million, 310 million and 294 million yuan in fictitious cash across the three reporting periods. Occupation is "moving the money out"; inflation is "making the books balance." The first hollows out the listed company; the second deceives auditors and investors.
The Money Was Repaid — Why Penalize Anyway?
It is worth noting that all of the occupied funds were ultimately returned: by December 2024 the occupied amounts had been repaid in full, and by June 2025 any new occupation had also been settled. Yet the regulator still ruled the violations established, because the penalty targets the failure to disclose as required — the disclosure obligation was breached the moment the fund occupation occurred. Repayment can erase the fact of occupation, but it cannot rewind the concealment. That is the core logic of fund-occupation cases: the money can be returned, but the deception on the books cannot be unwound.
A Wig Empire from Xuchang to Africa
This company was once the pride of a central Chinese city. In 1993, Zheng Youquan founded Rebecca as a joint venture with a US enterprise; in July 2003 it listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange as the A-share market's "first wig stock." It subsequently spread factories and sales networks across African countries including Nigeria and Ghana, and Zheng Youquan himself topped the Henan regional rich list of the Hurun Report in 2008. "Of every 10 wigs sold in the world, at least 6 come from here" — that was the calling card of Xuchang's hair-products industry, and the opening chapter of the Rebecca story.
ST designation is not the end of the story, but it is a watershed: when a company must resort to inflating cash balances to keep its books presentable, it is admitting that real operating figures can no longer win the capital market's trust. Wigs can be remade; trust cannot.
Three Penalty Notices on the Same Day — Three Techniques of Annual-Report Fraud
On the same day Rebecca resumed trading, three other A-share companies also received penalty notices for annual-report fraud — together forming a handy comparison chart of fraud techniques.
Jiaoda Onlly (600530) shuttled profits between fiscal years: in 2021 it understated total profit by 23.5 million yuan (213.52% of the restated total profit), then in 2024 it inflated profit by the identical amount (60.26% of that year's total profit) — which made its 2023 accounting-error-correction announcement itself a false record. Hide profits first, release them later; smooth the statements by moving numbers across years. The company's shares were suspended for one day on August 3 and renamed "ST Jiaoang" from August 4.
ST Site (002538) took the route of fabricating business: fictitious engineering-construction projects, urea procurement and organic-fertilizer sales were used to inflate or deflate profit, resulting in the 2021 annual report overstating profit by 36.3467 million yuan (6.76%) and the 2023 annual report understating it by 17.3485 million yuan (10.35%). The Anhui Securities Regulatory Bureau imposed a 6-million-yuan fine.
ST Pairui (300831) used the most concealed technique — tampering with goods-acceptance documents to delay revenue recognition. Its 2024 annual report understated revenue by 22.715 million yuan and profit by 17.1173 million yuan (11.84% and 26.18% respectively), then its 2025 interim report inflated both by the identical amounts (26.87% and 50.02% respectively) — shifting the first half's revenue into the second half, and this year's results into next year. Chairman Liu Qiang was aware and stood by; general manager Bai Jie and CFO Guo Wei planned and executed the scheme. The three were fined 2.2 million, 2 million and 2 million yuan respectively.
Place the three cases side by side and the map of annual-report fraud techniques comes into focus: cross-year profit shuttling (Jiaoda Onlly), fabricated business transactions (ST Site), delayed revenue recognition (ST Pairui) — and with Rebecca's related-party fund occupation and inflated cash balances added in, the four companies between them cover the mainstream playbooks of A-share financial fraud. The fines range from 4 million to 6 million yuan, but the regulatory stance is uniform: CCTV Finance's summary was that "regulators are maintaining sustained high-pressure enforcement against financial fraud, with a clear 'zero tolerance' posture." For Rebecca, this batch of same-day penalties is a footnote on the institutional environment — its ST designation is no isolated case, but one of several cards falling in sequence during the A-share market's "zero tolerance" cycle.
2026-08-03 increment: added the section "Three Penalty Notices on the Same Day — Three Techniques of Annual-Report Fraud" (Jiaoda Onlly / ST Site / ST Pairui), which combined with the Rebecca case forms a comparison of the mainstream techniques of A-share financial fraud.