Between 2020 and 2023, a small Florida venture fund built around a golf metaphor and a defense-sector pitch collected capital from investors who believed they were joining a nearly-subscribed $50 million vehicle managed by an investment banking veteran. The fund was Backswing Ventures Fund I, LP, organized as a Delaware limited partnership and structured to back early-stage companies across defense, commercial real estate, technology, data, and healthcare. The man who ran it was Kyle James Asman, a Windermere, Florida, resident who co-founded a boutique advisory firm and publicly described stints at Goldman Sachs and Duff & Phelps.
On April 9, 2026, the SEC filed a civil complaint against Asman and his management entity, Backswing Ventures GP LLC, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Case No. 6:26-cv-00778, alleging that Asman extracted more than $515,000 in management fees his own fund documents did not permit, told prospective investors the fund had raised $45 million when actual contributions stood at $2.2 million, and sent limited partners portfolio updates describing investments the fund had never made. Neither Asman nor Backswing Ventures GP LLC has ever been registered with the SEC as an investment adviser.
The Investment Banking Background Kyle Asman Claimed and What SEC Investigators Found Instead
Asman graduated from Arcadia University in 2017 with a degree in political science. The career that followed, as he described it in public investor forums and media appearances, included a co-founding role at BX3 Capital, a New York boutique advisory firm, along with stints at Goldman Sachs, Duff & Phelps, and Ryan LLC. He launched Backswing Fund I in February 2020, and by 2022 was describing the vehicle in interviews as a fully deployed fund with several successful exits.
The SEC’s complaint draws a sharper line around those credentials. According to the agency’s allegations, fund marketing materials described “investment banking roles” and a “tenure as a banker” that amounted, in the commission’s characterization, to an internship and a brief job during college — not the professional track record the framing implied. Limited partner and general partner Michael Vergura Jr. pushed back in a sworn affidavit, calling the SEC’s focus on Asman’s banking history “mind-boggling” and largely irrelevant to what Backswing actually did. Backswing itself framed the broader enforcement action as “largely a dispute over technical interpretations of agreements, fees, and fund manager background, rather than any misconduct.”
Seven Times the Permitted Fee and the Fund Administrator Whose Written Warning Went Ignored
Backswing Fund I’s own limited partnership agreement capped management fees for the first year of operation at between approximately $33,800 and $70,103, depending on which calculation method applied. During that same period, Asman paid himself and his management entity more than $515,000 — representing over 23% of all capital contributed to the fund.
The overcharge did not go undetected internally. On March 30, 2021, the fund’s administrator sent Asman an email identifying the problem explicitly. The administrator stated that the fund’s financial statements would be adjusted to reflect a permissible management fee of $70,103, with the remaining $445,532 reclassified as prepaid management fees, and warned him not to transfer any additional fees until that prepaid balance was fully depleted. By year-end 2021, the balance had not declined. It had grown to $448,861.
Backswing offered a different characterization in statements to the press: the amounts the SEC treats as management fees were, in the firm’s telling, legal costs incurred in connection with the commission’s own investigation, expressly permitted under the fund’s broad expense provisions. The firm also noted that Asman voluntarily forewent the salary to which the limited partnership agreement entitled him, in order to benefit investors. No court has adjudicated these competing readings, and Backswing has committed to contesting the complaint with what it calls “clear, contractual evidence.”
A Capital Raise Stated at $45 Million, Fund Records Showing $2.2 Million, and Portfolio Holdings That Did Not Exist
The fundraising misrepresentations are harder to reframe as contractual disputes. In 2020, Asman told prospective investors the fund had “raised 48 out of the 50 million,” was “currently through $45M of our $50M capital raise,” and was “just about fully subscribed.” Fund records as of December 2020 showed actual commitments of $3.8 million and contributions of $2.2 million. Investors who put their capital into Backswing believing they were entering a nearly-full $50 million vehicle were, by the fund’s own records, members of a pool roughly 4% that size.
The portfolio updates Asman sent existing limited partners compounded the picture across two separate holdings. Throughout 2020 and into early 2021, he circulated investor communications labeling an artificial intelligence company as “Status: Invested,” listing specific share counts, cost basis, and current market value. The fund never completed that investment. A second misrepresentation involved a firearm detection company: Backswing had genuinely invested $150,000 by November 2020, and Asman signed agreements in early 2021 for an additional $200,000 in preferred shares. Those shares were cancelled in April 2021 when the fund failed to tender payment. Later portfolio updates nonetheless listed the company at a total investment of $350,000 and cited a valuation markup driven by a subsequent financing round — treating cancelled share agreements as active positions and attributing gains the fund could not have captured.
How the Absence of a Required Independent Auditor Let Every Other Misrepresentation Go Unchallenged
Backswing Fund I’s limited partnership agreement required the retention of an independent auditor and the delivery of audited financial statements to investors on a defined schedule. Asman never hired one. Periodic unaudited financial reporting also failed to reach limited partners at the contractual intervals.
The SEC notes the significance of that omission plainly: an independent audit would have identified the management fee overcharge. Without external verification, investors received no mechanism for checking the fund’s own account of itself against its actual books. The portfolio updates describing phantom AI holdings and inflated firearm detection positions circulated through that same unverified environment. The absence of an auditor was not a footnote to the alleged fraud. It was the structural condition beneath which every other misrepresentation could survive.
Conclusion
The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, civil money penalties, and a bar preventing Asman from acting as or associating with any investment adviser, with a jury trial demanded. Backswing has called the complaint a fundamental misreading of its agreements, and no court has yet ruled on the merits. The fund’s own documents, however, show a permitted first-year management fee of at most $70,103 against a collected total exceeding $515,000, and actual capital contributions of $2.2 million against a stated raise of $45 million. Those are not contractual ambiguities. They are numbers.
