NEW YORK (AP) – A Panama-based ring used a cadre of smugglers who were adept at swallowing drug-filled pellets to smuggle millions of dollars worth of heroin into the city, authorities said Friday.

At a news conference, police and Drug Enforcement Administration officials announced the arrests of 19 suspects in the international heroin ring, including some of the so-called swallowers.

The organization paid the swallowers up to $10,000 plus expenses to ingest dozens of heroin-packed pellets – condoms or latex gloves fingers wrapped in tape – then take flights from Panama to New York, where they expelled the drugs by going to the bathroom. One industrious courier swallowed 84 pellets containing more than a half kilogram of heroin for one trip, authorities said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly noted the swallowers risk fatal overdoses by having the pellets rupture in their stomachs.

“This can be a precarious occupation,” he said.

In the last two days, local and federal agents arrested 11 suspects in the Bronx, Manhattan and Rhode Island. Another eight suspects were in custody in Panama.