How do you Analyze Financials to Find Evidence of Illicit Activity?

SEC EDGAR searches are a great tool to take a look into the financial movements of larger companies we may be looking into, but I currently have a hard time interpreting data and finding threads that may point to illicit financial activity.

My current process is to go through the EDGAR filings, isolate other company names and executives’ names, and run them through negative news string searches and databases like OffShoreLeaks and OCCRP. But this relies on companies’/individuals’ illicit actions already having been reported on by others.

How do you find new threads that may point to illicit activity that hasn’t already been reported on? Outside of individuals’ names and company names, what are some bits of evidence in the financials themselves that could indicate areas for further investigation?

(If you have any course recommendations on this, that would be great too!)

Thanks