US federal prosecutors said on Tuesday they have charged a former employee of a Los Angeles hospital for selling information from celebrities' medical files to the media.

Lawanda Jackson (49) was an administrator at UCLA Medical Centre, which recently announced it had taken action against several staff for peeking at the private records of singer Britney Spears and actress Farrah Fawcett.

She was indicted on 9 April for "accessing the private medical records of celebrity patients at the UCLA Medical Centre and selling information obtained from those files to a national media outlet", the prosecutor's office said.

Jackson, who was fired from UCLA last May, faces one count of "illegally obtaining individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage", which carries a maximum 10-year jail term, it said in a statement.

Prosecutors allege she was paid at least $4600 for the information. The statement did not name the media outlet nor the celebrities involved.

AFP