Backswing Ventures was lying from day 1

The Non-Financial Ledger

Forty-two people trusted this fund. That number did not spring into existence the moment Asman filed a legal document. It grew. Thirty-three people were in by the end of 2020. Five more joined by the end of 2021. Four more by the end of 2022. Each time someone wired money to Backswing Ventures, they were making a bet not on a stock or a bond, but on a person. They were betting that Kyle Asman was who he said he was, that the fund was doing what he said it was doing, and that their money was being deployed the way the contract said it would be.

The minimum buy-in was $250,000. That is a life-changing amount of money for most people. It is a retirement fund, a child’s education, a safety net built over decades of work. Some limited partners in funds like this are smaller family offices, individuals who pooled together savings for the promise of early-stage returns in defense, technology, and healthcare startups. The PPM told them a story: a serious fund, diversified holdings, a credentialed manager, and the protection of an annual independent audit to verify everything was on the level.

None of that was real. The audit never happened, not once in three years. Instead of the roughly $70,000 the contract permitted as a management fee in year one, over half a million dollars left the fund and flowed through a related company, much of it going to Asman directly as “salaries and wages.” The investment portfolio updates that investors received, the documents that told them their money was working and growing, were populated with companies that had never received their funds, share positions that had been formally cancelled, and valuations built on nothing. When an investor read in February 2021 that BVLP had a 300% winner in an AI company with $3.6 million in projected revenue, they had no reason to know the fund never owned a single share of that company.

The SEC complaint notes that at least some limited partners believed Asman had actually taken less than he was entitled to under the contract. That detail carries a particular weight. These investors were not suspicious. They trusted him. And because the audit was never done, because the quarterly financial statements were never delivered on time, and because the Schedule K-1s sent to investors each year showed only the adjusted, reduced fee and not the full amount that had been extracted, there was no mechanism for them to discover the truth on their own.

This is what financial fraud looks like when it targets real people. It does not announce itself. It arrives in a well-designed investment portfolio PDF with names of companies and status labels and projected returns, delivered by someone who speaks the language of deal-making and calls himself a banker.

Straight from the Court Filing

“Sorry again for the delay in paying those invoices, the fund spent to [sic] much in management fee[s] in Year 1, so I have been coming out of pocket in Year 2 to cover all the funds[‘] non-legal expenses.”

— Kyle James Asman, email to fund administrator, November 26, 2021

“we are working on getting the LPA amended ASAP so we can charge management fees since inception of the fund. Once I have draft language for the amendment I will provide.”

— Kyle James Asman, email to fund administrator, March 30, 2021

“we are currently completing our annual financial audit with [the accounting firm], they have signed off on the financials, and we are currently awaiting their audit opinion which we will have in time for the March update.”

— Kyle James Asman, “Investment Portfolio” emailed to limited partners, February 2021

“I am aware of the old language in the LPA,” [and would] provide the administrator “an amended version [of the LPA] from the spring.”

— Kyle James Asman, email to fund administrator, September 22, 2021

What Investors Were Told vs. What Was Actually Happening

Across investor communications, marketing materials, and regulatory filings, Asman and BVGP systematically presented a version of the fund that did not match the financial and operational reality.

• Claimed: The fund had raised “$48 out of $50 million” and was “just about fully subscribed.” Reality: BVLP’s financial statements as of December 31, 2020, showed aggregate capital commitments of only $3,823,800 and capital contributions of only $2,233,800. The fund had raised less than 8% of what Asman was telling prospective investors.
• Claimed: A March 2021 Form D filed with the SEC stated BVLP had raised $13 million. Reality: BVLP’s own financial statements, prepared by the fund administrator Asman himself had engaged, showed commitments under $4 million at year-end 2020. The Form D filing was signed by Asman.
• Claimed: In January 2023, Asman told limited partners BVLP had capital commitments of $15 million and that he intended to raise a second fund. Reality: BVLP’s financial statements as of December 31, 2022 showed commitments and contributions of only $3,065,204.
• Claimed: Multiple investment portfolio updates labeled an AI company as “Status: Invested” with a $250,000 to $500,000 position and a $10 million company valuation. Reality: The SEC alleges BVLP never actually invested in the AI company at any point during the relevant period.
• Claimed: The February 2021 Investment Portfolio described a $350,000 total position in a firearm detection company, including $200,000 in additional shares with a “$25M” valuation. Reality: Those additional shares had been formally cancelled effective January 20, 2021, before the February portfolio was distributed, because BVLP never paid for them.
• Claimed: Asman’s credentials described him as having held “investment banking roles” at two major firms and a “tenure as a banker.” Reality: He was a summer intern at one firm as a college junior, was not offered a full-time position, and worked at the second firm only during his senior year of college.
• Claimed: The February 2021 investor portfolio stated the annual audit was nearly complete and an opinion was forthcoming. Reality: The accounting firm had only provided a fee quote. No audit was ever started or completed at any point during the entire relevant period.

Seven Times the Authorized Amount: The Fee Extraction in Detail

The fee overcharge was not a rounding error or a bookkeeping mistake. It was a sustained extraction that continued even after Asman was warned in writing to stop.

• Under the fund’s own PPM, the management fee for 2020, prorated from February through December, was $70,103. Under the alternative calculation in the LPA (2% of fair market value of portfolio assets), the figure was even lower: $33,800. Asman paid $515,635 to BVINC, an affiliated company he also controlled, in that same period.
• The excess of $445,532 above the authorized fee was reclassified by the fund administrator as “prepaid management fees” on BVLP’s balance sheet. This did not return the money to investors. It reclassified money already gone as a credit Asman could draw down in future years.
• In 2021, after being explicitly told in writing to stop transferring fee funds until the prepaid balance was depleted, Asman directed the recording of an additional $68,005 in management fees. The prepaid balance increased from $445,532 to $448,861, moving further in the wrong direction.
• In 2022, BVLP drew down $71,304 from the prepaid balance. Under both the PPM and LPA calculations, the permitted fee for 2022 would have been $64,676 or $54,076, respectively. The drawdown exceeded the authorized amount under either formula.
• The fees were paid to BVINC, not BVGP. Both the PPM and the LPA stated that management fees were to be paid to BVGP. Asman controlled both entities. The routing of fees through the affiliate is a documented deviation from the contract terms, separate from the amount discrepancy.
• The Schedule K-1s sent to investors showed only the adjusted, authorized fee of $70,103, not the full $515,635 that had been taken. Investors had no direct line of sight to the actual extraction from reading their own tax documents.

Hiding Behind Paperwork: Technical Compliance as Cover

The structure Asman used to run BVLP provided multiple places where the letter of procedure was followed just enough to create the appearance of legitimacy, while the substance was gutted.

• The LPA required the fund to engage an independent auditor annually. Asman’s response, when pressed, was to say he planned to amend the LPA to remove the requirement. The LPA also required that any amendment with a material adverse effect on limited partners receive the consent of two-thirds of them. No such vote was ever called. The amendment was never written. The audit never happened. The legal mechanism designed to protect investors was circumvented by promising to change the rule rather than following it.
• BVLP did cause Schedule K-1s to be delivered to investors, which technically satisfied one LPA reporting obligation. But those K-1s showed only the adjusted, authorized management fee, not the full amount actually taken. Delivering a required document while omitting the most damaging facts inside it is compliance in form only.
• Asman consulted what he called a “Limited Partnership Advisory Committee” on the audit waiver. That committee consisted of three investors out of 33 to 42 total limited partners. The LPA required consent from two-thirds of the total limited partners for actions that materially harm them. The SEC complaint notes those three members described the committee as “informal” and held discussions by phone. This was not a vote; it was a private conversation with a handpicked minority of investors, used to dress up a unilateral decision.
• The fund administrator reclassified the excess fees as “prepaid management fees” on BVLP’s balance sheet rather than as a loss or unauthorized withdrawal. This accounting treatment kept the excess inside the fund’s books as an asset, rather than surfacing it as fraud. The reclassification was accurate bookkeeping of a bad situation, but it also meant that investors reading the balance sheet would see an asset line item rather than an alarm.