Alternative Investments ???

The last two years, through my friends and cold calls from some sales agents, I came across some alternative investments that guaranteed or assured crazy returns.  Some of them are:

- Hong Kong Land Asset Acquisition, 100 to 200% returns in 5-7 years
- Brazil Opportunity investment, assured 64% return in 36 months
- German Government Listed Building Projects, 24% return in 24 months
- Brazil Global Forestry Investments,  Fixed 10%-12.5% yearly returns with assured 5% capital appreciation on exit in 36 months
- Detroit Exit Strategy (house flipping), Fixed 15% in 12 months
- Canada Crude oil, assured 3% continual payout every 3 months for 24 months
- Phuket Nikki Beach  (Buy-to-let hotel investment) - 5% Fixed returns annually

I have attended one of the seminars and I have serious doubts on these investments:

- most of the companies offering these investments are new and have no proven track record

- why these Brazilian, US, German, Canadian, etc, come all the way to Singapore and pay such high returns to the investors, when they should be able to obtain much cheaper loans from their national banks?

- these companies said "due diligence" was used to research these overseas projects and assured people that these are safe investments.  But how true is this?

- some companies presented testimonies from such "first generation" investors to convince people that these investments really pay.  To me, even if these testimonies are true, they do not make the investment more safe.  They actually make it more dangerous. First generation investors, after tasted sweet (or bait?), most likely will pump in more money into the investment and also drafting family members and friends to join.  These companies are collecting a bigger pool of money in the 2nd iteration of these investments on people's greed.

- lastly, most of the sales people are saying that these investment opportunities will not last and telling people not to miss the boat.

Although the jury is still out on whether these are ponzi schemes, and no risk no gain, but Caveat Emptor !