I think it's pretty clear that there was.

This guy didn't give up his corporate career for simple country life. Those things sell for like ,000 a pop, despite the fact that you can only get like 0 worth of wool off them every year. It's definitely a pyramid scheme.

A pyramid of alpacas.

While its not impossible to make money on the wool, it is very difficult. Therefore the only way to recover your investment is to breed your alpacas and sell the new animals. This means you have to constantly find more and more people to buy alpacas and buy into the pyramid. the bubble collapses when everyone who could ever want an alpaca, has an alpaca, and the prices plummet.

It was right before the ostritch/emu bubble. No, really.

Yep, alpacas were the world's most adorable pyramid scam.

You have to be a Peruvian mountain man to really get any use out of them.