I don't think that the act of running a pass-through, by itself, is scamming, as long as the pass-through details and risks were disclosed appropriately.
I disagree.
Running a PPT was paying Pirate to make you and your investors the recipients of obviously fraudulent transfers of other people's money. If that's not scamming, what is? But as I've said elsewhere, I'm willing to give PPT operators who aren't on record as saying they knew or suspected it was a Ponzi a free pass this one time. But in the future, I will be holding people to a higher standard.
But if the investors knew going in that a pirate default meant a pass through default, how is the pass through operation scamming?
I bolded the portion that explains that, which you seem to have quoted without reading. The pass through operation is scamming Pirate's other victims by hiring Pirate to take money from them and give it to the PPT's customers. If I help a woman hire a hitman to kill her husband, I am as responsible for the murder as the hitman is. This is true even if I was completely honest with the woman and got her a trustworthy and reliable hitman.
No. They were just resellers of the Pirate security. Independent entirely. They should not suffer any liability for the product they only resold.
Really? So if someone wants someone killed and they pay me to hire a hitman for them, I'm not responsible for the actions I paid the hitman to take because I'm just "reselling" his product?