It seemed like a good idea at the time, we suppose: Sneak celebrities' medical records to the National Enquirer, collect $4,700 and quietly go back to your day job knowing you helped a venerable journalistic institution uphold its mission of transparency and insight into the fraught conditions of Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett and others. But that was then, and this — a guilty plea and a possible 10-year prison sentence for tabloid source Lawanda Jackson — is now.

Jackson, 49, who had managed just fine at UCLA Medical Center for 32 years without feeding confidential files to the press, will now do hard time and pay a fine of up to $250,000 for doing exactly that back in 2006. She resigned her position last year before UCLA could fire her, but not before details of Fawcett's cancer diagnosis and treatment could show up in the Enquirer's hallowed pages and a subsequent investigation revealed more than 1,000 breaches of hospital confidentiality since 2003. Another employee, Huping Zhou, was indicted last month for illegally accessing 71 celebs' records, which he kept to himself rather than broker them to the tabloids. Selfish, selfish, selfish!

Meanwhile, Jackson will be sentenced in May, the medical documents are now secure, and the Enquirer's pillars of rectitude appear to have deflected a spray of legal bullets from the feds:

U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said that no charges have been filed against the Enquirer or any other publications, but that the role of the media is part of the investigation into the privacy breaches.

"Certainly there is possible culpability at media outlets if we can determine that they were knowingly paying for the illegal access of celebrity files," Mrozek said.

"Knowingly paying for the illegal access of celebrity files"? Never! A stolen Farrah Fawcett biopsy is worth at least $7,500 in this market.