SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A Utah man who made a hobby of traveling to Idaho to buy lottery tickets recently won a $3 million ticket but didn’t find out until a month after his purchase, according to Idaho Lottery officials.

Around the July 4 holiday, J. Refugio Gonzalez Almeida reportedly made two trips from Utah to Malad, Idaho. He made the trips so that he could buy tickets for the then-$400 million Mega Millions jackpot draw.

His second trip earned him $3,000,000.

“Playing the Lottery is my hobby. When I didn’t win the jackpot on that Friday, I thought ‘I need a ticket for the Fourth of July,’ so I drove back to Malad on Saturday,” Almeida told Idaho Lottery. He reportedly had other, smaller winning tickets, so he used the money from those to give it another shot. “I bought all the games, including Mega Millions. I had a lot tickets,” Almeida said.

It was on July 4, which also happened to be his birthday, that Almeida bought the $3 million ticket. The ticket reportedly matched the first five numbers of the jackpot, but not the Megaball. It would have been a $1 million win, but a Megaplier number of three tripled his winnings.

It was a month later that Almeida went back to Malad to check his winnings. “I had $2, $8, not a lot. And then they scanned this one and told me I had to take it to the Lottery Commission. So here I am!” Almeida said. “I am taking this right to the bank and depositing it!”

Idaho Lottery officials said that the jackpot grew to a record $1.58 billion on August 8. Officials said that since July 1, Mega Millions generated around $3 million for the Idaho Lottery’s beneficiaries, public schools, and buildings.