COLUMBIA - South Carolina's top agriculture official was indicted Thursday on charges of taking $15,000 in illegal payoffs to protect an illegal cockfighting ring in Aiken County.

If convicted, state Commissioner of Agriculture Charles Sharpe could face eight to 10 years in federal prison, a prosecutor said in Thursday's arraignment. Sharpe pleaded not guilty to the charges.

An indictment says Sharpe accepted two payments from operators of a cockfighting arena that he didn't report as campaign contributions. It also says Sharpe tried to convince Aiken County authorities to allow cockfighting at the facility, even though the state outlaws it.

Sharpe was indicted by a federal grand jury under the Hobbes Act, which prohibits public officials from using their office to extort bribes.

"He denies the charges and maintains his innocence," his attorney, former state Rep. John Felder, said Thursday after an arraignment. Sharpe was freed on $100,000 bond.

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford on Thursday suspended the 65-year-old Sharpe without pay pending trial.

Elected agriculture commissioner two years ago, Sharpe is responsible for developing and maintaining agriculture markets.

He is the first statewide-elected S.C. official charged with a serious crime since at least 1900, said Lacy Ford, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina.

His indictment marks the second time in a little more than a year that a Carolinas agriculture commissioner has been charged with a crime.

Former N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps was sentenced to four years in federal prison in March for her role as ringleader of a scheme to extort political contributions from carnival vendors in exchange for state business.

Charges against Sharpe include extortion and money-laundering.

In federal court Thursday, Sharpe stood handcuffed, coatless and tieless as U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph McCrorey read his rights and asked whether Sharpe wanted the 25-page indictment read aloud. Sharpe said he did not.

According to the indictment, the cockfighting group in early 2001 began holding regular tournaments that attracted hundreds of spectators to a large building in Aiken County called the Testing Facility. Its name later was changed to the Carolina Club.

Cockfighting, in which roosters fitted with razor-sharp steel blades on their legs battle to the death, is illegal everywhere in the United States except Louisiana and some counties in New Mexico.

The indictment said that when Sharpe was in the state House, before becoming agriculture commissioner, he tried to help cockfighting enthusiasts legalize the sport in South Carolina. It says they gave him campaign contributions, which he reported as required by state law.

As a candidate for agriculture commissioner, the indictment says, Sharpe on Sept. 26, 2002, tried to convince an Aiken County sheriff's deputy that the cockfights at the Carolina Club were legal under S.C. law.

The indictment said the Aiken County deputy secretly recorded his conversation with Sharpe that day.

That night, the indictment alleges, Sharpe met in Spartanburg with a member of the cockfighting ring and accepted an envelope containing more than $5,000 in cash, which Sharpe didn't report as a campaign contribution.

According to the indictment, Sharpe also accepted a $10,000 cashier's check from the cockfighting group in December 2002 and did not report it as a campaign contribution.

He's accused of depositing the money, along with several legitimate campaign contributions, into a bank account in the name of "Re-Elect Charles Sharpe." The indictment says that over the next three weeks, he wrote a series of checks payable to himself totaling about $10,500.

The indictment cited those withdrawals as the basis for the count of money-laundering.

Sharpe also tried in May and June 2003 to persuade Aiken County's newly elected sheriff, Michael Hunt, that an official opinion from the S.C. Attorney General's Office upheld the legality of cockfights at the Carolina Club, according to the indictment.

Hunt recorded the conversation for the FBI and SLED, the indictment said.

SLED Chief Robert Stewart said Thursday that Sharpe had been under FBI and SLED investigation since January 2002. "A number of complex investigative techniques were utilized," Stewart said, referring to audio and video taping.

The indictment also charges Sharpe with lying to FBI and SLED agents on three occasions between December 2003 and May 2004 "in an attempt to evade responsibility and to avoid punishment."

The lies included denying that he had told anyone he had an opinion from the S.C. attorney general concerning the legality of the cockfights in Aiken, denying that he had received any large unreported cash payments, and stating that the $10,000 cashier's check was a loan, the indictment charged.

In a related indictment, a former S.C. State Law Enforcement Division agent was charged with lying to FBI agents. That indictment says he tried to tip off an Aiken County cockfighting ring about an investigation.

Keith Stokes was fired from SLED in February.