''Even after all of this fuss, I'd do it again,'' said Orley de Santana, a 26-year-old laborer, who went to South Africa but was unable to sell his kidney for $6,000 before the police broke up the ring. ''In order not to have to steal or kill, I thought it better to sell my kidney.''

Among the men who did give up a kidney, some say they have experienced health problems that no one warned them about.

''For me, the complications began almost immediately,'' said José Carlos da Conceicao da Silva, 24, a day laborer who hauls produce. He said he required a second operation in South Africa on a lung three days after his kidney was removed. Since returning to Brazil his health has worsened, he said.

''I'm tired all the time and can't lift heavy weights, which I have to be able to do if people are going to hire me,'' he said. ''My blood pressure goes up and down, and I feel pain and numbness where the scar from the operation is.''

Worse still, after his flight back to Brazil, Mr. da Silva, who is not related to Alberty da Silva, said he was robbed of nearly all of the $6,000 he was paid for his kidney when he went to São Paulo during a layover on his flight home. ''I begged and pleaded for them not to take the money, telling them that I had sold my kidney abroad and showing them the scar,'' he recalled, near tears.

Another donor, Rogerio Bezerra da Silva, not related to the others, also lost his kidney and his cash, which South African authorities confiscated after the ring was exposed late last year, and is now the object of mockery in his slum neighborhood.

On occasion, Alberty da Silva says, he shows pictures of his trip to South Africa to the neighborhood children. During the interview, he showed them to a reporter, too, including some of him in Durban with the woman who received his kidney. He also displayed a letter she later wrote, thanking him for ''the gift of life.''