A Dublin woman has told a jury that she trusted Thomas Byrne and was horrified to find out the former solicitor was registered as the owner of her family home.

Aideen Costigan has been giving evidence at the lawyer turned waiter's 50 million euro theft and fraud trial.

She has told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that Thomas Byrne used to take piano lessons as a teenager with her mother at their house in Walkinstown.

She said she would have been aware from her mother, Josephine, that he went on to study law adding that he had 'a big flashy office’ on Walkinstown Road.

The court heard that her mother considered Thomas Byrne a friend and when she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004, she requested his services to make a will, leaving her house on Bunting Road to her children.

Thomas Byrne and Aideen Costigan were executors of the will and when her mother died in May 2006 he attended the funeral.

‘He did sympathise with me but didn’t sympathise with anyone else in the family’, she said.

She gave evidence that around August of that year Thomas Byrne contacted her personally to say he had a client interested in buying the house on Bunting Road for 420 thousand euro.

She told the jury ‘that was huge money for the house’, but the family were not ready to sell.

Property prices were increasing and they were taking time out and had yet to clean out their mother's home.

When they later decided to put the house on the market they turned down one bid and accepted an offer from Mr Byrne’s client.

‘It seems very foolish now but I dropped him down a key so he could show the house’ she said.

Aideen Costigan said like her mother she trusted Thomas Byrne.

In October 2007 her husband Paul heard on a drivetime radio show that his solicitor’s practice was in trouble with the Law Society.

The court heard on advice she phoned the Land Registry and to her horror found out that ownership of her mother’s house had been transferred to Thomas Byrne on 1 July 2007 for 410 thousand euro.

In the witness box, she denied selling him the house or that the signature on the deeds was her own.

While she could not say where she was on July 1st she said she was certain she was not with Thomas Byrne.

Under cross examination by defence barrister Damien Colgan SC, she denied that she had panicked when his offices closed because she was due to be paid by Mr Byrne for the house in November 2007.

When asked if Mr Byrne had had tenants in the house, she replied ‘is this a joke?’. She said the house was unfurnished and the ESB bills would show no-one was living in the property.

Her husband Paul Costigan gave evidence of the stress they have experienced in the last 6 years.

He told the jury they have been tied up in the courts and recently sold the Walkinstown property for less than half the price they had once been offered.

Thomas Byrne (47) with an address at Mountjoy Square denies 51 charges including counts of fraud, forgery, and theft from 6 financial institutions between 2004 and 2007.

It is alleged he forged documents to make it look like he owned his clients’ properties in order to secure multiple bank loans.