A former X Factor contestant has been found guilty of laundering £20,000 as part of a wider scam on pensioners.
Nathan Fagan-Gayle, known as Nathan and more recently Starboy Nathan, received the money in his bank account from 73-year-old Elizabeth Curtis.
She had been tricked into handing it over by a fake police officer almost two years ago.
The con was part of a wider scam linked to suspicious payments to a bank account in Syria.
Prosecutor Kevin Dent said the R&B singer-songwriter, 29, withdrew £15,000 and filtered £5,000 through his mother's and girlfriend's accounts to make it look like "fresh money".
Fagan-Gayle denied wrongdoing, claiming he thought the money was for a booking in Dubai from a man he met in a London nightclub.
He claimed he had given his girlfriend some of the cash as a "romantic" gesture.
"I wanted to show off a bit. Show her I am doing it for myself. Send her some money. At the time I was like 'What's mine is yours, innit'. I was just trying to be romantic," he told the jury.
He also told the court he gave a friend money to look after a trip to the US and paid off a debt on a Mercedes lease to Port Vale footballer Anthony Grant.
But a jury at the Old Bailey rejected his explanation.
He is to be sentenced with a number of other young men who have also been convicted of their part in the wider £900,000 fraud.
The jury was not told the con had been discovered by the Met's Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) after a separate terror investigation found suspicious payments into a bank account of a person now in Syria.
The fraudsters targeted elderly people aged between 72 and 94 across the country.
In total, Ms Curtis was persuaded to transfer around £130,000 to different accounts.
She broke down in a taped interview, saying: "I was absolutely stunned and shocked and could not believe I had been so stupid and naive as to be taken in."
The jury heard Fagan-Gayle, of Tower Hamlets, east London, blew all of his cut on clothes at shops like Zara, shoes at Footlocker and on hiring a car in the US.
Fagan-Gale, who toured with JLS and previously collaborated with Alesha Dixon, was signed to Sir Richard Branson's label V2 as a 17-year-old and released his first single Come Into My Room, in 2006.
After appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in 2008 he appeared on X Factor in 2012 but failed to make it through to the live shows.
Of the talent show, he said: "It went all right. Obviously, because I had already been doing music for 10 years and quite a few people had already heard of me because I did the JLS stuff, it was a double-edged sword.
"It's more of a show for amateurs and, because of the history, I was expected to go further so when I did not go to the final, it was damaging. But it also widened my audience."
Fagan-Gayle was granted conditional bail until his sentencing.
