North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue's fundraising chief for her winning 2008 campaign has entered an Alford plea to a felony obstruction charge for using his company to hide payments from a donor and pad another campaign worker's salary.

A Wake County judge on Wednesday accepted the plea from Peter Reichard of Greensboro and gave him a suspended sentence of six to eight months, 24 months of unsupervised probation and a $25,000 fine.

An Alford plea does not admit guilt but concedes there is enough evidence for a conviction.

Reichard pleaded to the same count on which he was indicted by a grand jury two weeks ago. The indictment accused Reichard of funneling $32,000 from a Morganton businessman through Reichard's merchant banking firm to campaign worker Julieigh Sitton. .

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)