US grand jury indicts Australian rugby player

A US federal grand jury has indicted Australian rugby player and IVF geneticist Michael Quinn on charges of attempted child sex trafficking and travelling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.

The secret jury handed down its decision in the US District Court in Los Angeles on Friday, but the indictment was only made public on Monday (Tuesday afternoon AEST).

The 33-year-old, who was in the US on vacation and to play in a tournament with his Melbourne Chargers rugby team, faces life in a US prison if convicted of the attempted sex trafficking of a minor charge.

An undercover US Homeland security investigations agent had allegedly began communicating with Quinn on a social networking website before Quinn flew to the US last month.

A sting was set up at a beachside Los Angeles hotel on May 21 with Quinn under the impression he was attending a sex party and a six-year-old boy would be delivered to him by a pimp for $US250 ($A335), authorities allege.

"Michael Quinn, also known as 'Mick', aka 'southof', aka 'inhere', knowingly travelled in interstate commerce and into the US from Australia to Los Angeles County, within the Central District of California, for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct ... namely, to engage in sexual acts with a boy approximately six years of age," the grand jury indictment states.

Quinn, a Monash University-educated geneticist who worked at a leading Melbourne IVF clinic, has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles since his May 21 arrest.