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UCLA Worker Indicted for Selling Data


May 1, 2008

The United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles has indicted a former employee at UCLA Medical Center for selling patient medical information to a “national media outlet.”

The indictment against Lawanda Jackson does not disclose the name of the media outlet that bought the information or affected patients. The National Enquirer, however, published details of actress Farrah Fawcett’s cancer treatment at the hospital.

Jackson was an administrative specialist at the hospital until being terminated on March 21. The indictment alleges that beginning in or about 2006 and continuing until she was terminated, Jackson had an agreement with the media outlet to pass on individually identifiable health information about celebrity patients. “Defendant received at least $4,600 in the form of checks written by the national media outlet payable to her husband,” according to the indictment.

She is charged with violating the HIPAA privacy rule with the intent to sell, transfer and use information for commercial advantage, personal gain or malicious harm. The punishment if convicted is a fine of up to $250,000, imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both.

The indictment is the second handed down in recent weeks against individuals charged with selling patient records. In April, the U.S. Attorney in New York charged Dwight McPherson with accessing almost 50,000 patient records and selling some of them. McPherson was a former patient admissions representative at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center (see story at healthdatamanagement.com/news/breach_security26104-1.html.

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