if the interest comes that week he gives 6.9% to the investors and keeps .1% himself for setting up the system.
We don't know about the 0.1%. It seems too low to keep the Ponzi aides in line. But, of course, the collaborators will not tell us how much they really get.
2) he is duped by Pirateat40 in a way that he really, really, really believes that Pirateat40 is some bitcoin super-trader or has some other super-secret thing that he can do that makes tons and tons and tons of BTC but he can never tell anyone about. The denial part comes in here, and he thinks he is just simply offering another wild-west style bitcoin product to smaller "investors," Sure it's been alleged by many, many users to be a Ponzi but maybe, just maybe, once upon a star this guy is totally legit, and is trading like a boss or whatever to be able to pay investors 3000+% each year. In this scenario he is only guilty of being naive and ignorant, duped by Pirateat40 who does in fact seem to be a reasonably good scammer. If BurtW really rolled dice with Pirate, really saw the "baller lifestyle" in Vegas, then this scenario is very likely and after this scam collapses he will be regretful but he won't have known the whole time he was an agent of evil for .1%/wk for all he could bring in.
pirateat40 cannot risk showing himself to anybody who is not fully involved, so this is out of the question. He cannot reveal his identity. This says something about everybody who claims to have met him.