A frequent Fox News guest analyst has been charged with fraud after falsely claiming to be a former CIA agent, US prosecutors say.

Wayne Simmons of Annapolis, Maryland, portrayed himself as an "outside paramilitary special operations officer" for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 2000.

He allegedly tried to use that claim to get government security clearances and work as a defence contractor.

The 62-year-old was arrested on Thursday after a grand jury indicted him in relation to alleged misconduct, including major fraud and making false statements to the government.

The indictment said that Simmons falsely claimed on national security forms that his previous arrests and convictions were related to his CIA work and that he had held a top secret security clearance.

At one point he was deployed overseas as an intelligence adviser to senior military officers, the US attorney's office for Virginia's Eastern District said in a statement.

He has appeared on Fox News as a guest analyst on terrorism since 2002, a profile on Amazon.com said.

Fox News spokeswoman Carly Shanahan said Mr Simmons had been a guest on the network and had not been paid.

The Amazon.com profile said he worked in anti-narcotics operations and in 2004 was part of Pentagon program for military and intelligence analysts.

He also spoke at a 2013 forum sponsored by the Citizens Committee on Benghazi, probing the deaths of four Americans in Libya in 2012 and the role of then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

The CIA said in a statement that it was working closely with the Justice Department on the matter.

The indictment also alleged that Mr Simmons defrauded a victim out of about $125,000 in a real estate-related scam.

Mr Simmons is co-author of the thriller The Natanz Directive and a contributor to the conservative publication Human Events, the profile said.

Reuters