Maybe he bought it from someone else or paid for multiple years.
It was only registered for 1 year so I was pretty sure it wasn't the latter. And far too cheap to be bought from someone else. But since it was an expiring domain I guess it was money well spent.
$69 is the standard cost to backorder an expiring domain at namejet etc.
This is what happened. Luckily the domain happened to be dropping a few days after I decided I wanted it.