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I think in hindsight it was an obvious ponzi and I don't know how it was possible that it grew to such proportions.
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Hindsight?!
It was obvious to probably the majority of people that it was a Ponzi from day-1. 7% weekly is obviously mathematically unsustainable. Plenty of people made this point over and over. The reality is that many of the "investors" knew it had to be a Ponzi, or highly suspected as much, and put money in anyway because they figured they could get out earlier than the next guy.
Frankly, it's a little hard to consider the vast majority of "investors" in this to be "victims". More accurately, they were gamblers who lost. This was not some well-hidden accounting-tricks/book-obfuscation thing that took diligent people by surprise...
tl;dr: The pirate scam was despicable, but its "investors" should probably be called "gamblers" more so than "victims".