French investment group – Groupe Bernard Tapie`s push to buy online poker operator Full Tilt Poker for $80 million seems to have failed over disagreement with the Department of Justice on how quickly players with money tied up on the site would be repaid, a lawyer for the group said on Tuesday.

Benham Dayanim, a Washington-based attorney for Groupe Bernard Tapie said that prosecutors changed their offer earlier this month and wanted players repaid in full within 90 days of the sale.“We were not prepared to do that,” Dayanim said. “The DOJ did not make that a deal-breaker until the very end.” Dayanim said the change came just as the deal with the Justice Department was being finalized. The deal also failed because the group couldn’t resolve whether creditors and courts would view the buyout as valid without coming after Tapie for Full Tilt’s other debts. More time to restore player balances would have helped resolve that, but the 90-day demand made that unworkable, he said.

“Clearly, we understood that they were negotiating with another party,” Dayanim said.

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