Donald Scott
Background
Donald leads Refundee's recovery operations across the UK, the Nordic markets and English-speaking Europe. He specialises in cryptocurrency exchange scams, forex and CFD platform recoveries, unauthorised broker cases and binary options fraud — the technical categories where victims are most often told by their bank that the loss is "their fault". Donald is Martin Fischer's counterpart for the English-language side of the business, and works closely with Sofia Bergström on cross-border Nordic crypto and broker matters.
Before joining Refundee, Donald spent 6 years at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), where he served as a Senior Investigator in the banking and payment services division. He led investigations into some of the most complex APP fraud cases in the FOS's history — his casework shaped several of the reasoned decisions that later informed the Payment Systems Regulator's mandatory reimbursement framework.
Donald personally leads case strategy on the firm's most complex APP fraud, safe-account and cross-border investment scam matters, and writes and speaks regularly on consumer scam recovery.
Crypto and forex scams beat sophisticated people every day. The victim isn't naive — the platform looks real, the interface shows profits, the account manager returns your call. But the moment you try to withdraw, the story changes. My job is to prove to the bank, in writing, that what they classified as an 'authorised investment' was a coercive, unauthorised trading platform that never held your funds in real markets.
Career
Areas of expertise
Languages
- English — native
Committees, memberships and appointments
- UK Finance — Fraud Prevention Working GroupIndustry observer (Refundee delegate), 2023 – present.
- Association of British Insurers (ABI) Consumer PanelIndependent advisor on scam recovery, 2022 – present.
- Which? Money Consumer Advisory BoardScam-recovery specialist advisor, 2021 – present.
- PSR Payment Fraud Advisory CouncilConsumer-side representative, 2024 – present.
- British Bankers' Association APP Fraud RoundtableFounding external member, 2020 – 2023.
Selected writing & commentary
- "Reimbursement is not resolution: why mandatory refunds haven't reduced APP fraud volumes" — The Payments Journal, 2025.
Analyses 18 months of post-mandatory-reimbursement data and proposes a supplementary detection framework. - "Six years at the Ombudsman: what banks never learned about scam victims" — Money Marketing, 2022.
- "The reasoned decision framework in APP fraud disputes" — Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, 2020 (peer-reviewed).
Lost money to a bank transfer scam?
Donald leads recoveries for UK, Nordic and English-speaking European victims. If you're an English speaker in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the UK — or an expat elsewhere in Europe — his team handles your case in English from start to finish.
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