Note: This article was first published on Tony Ortega’s Underground on September 23, 2021. We republish here for archival purposes.

By Jeffrey Augustine | September 23, 2021

OT 8 Scientologist and dentist Dr. Greg Winteregg died of a heart attack on July 13 in Palm Harbor, Florida. He was 66.

We’re noting his death because at one time he was promoted by the church as a high-visibility Scientology success story. And as an OT 8, having reached the top of Scientology’s “Bridge to Total Freedom,” Winteregg should have been “cause over matter, energy, space, and time.”

Born in Berne, Indiana on June 8, 1955, Winteregg became a prominent Scientologist and worked as a vice president at a World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE) business consulting company called MGE: Management Experts, Inc.

In the mid-2000s, Winteregg was promoted by Source magazine as a Patron of the IAS, Scientology’s membership organization:

Marcus Group Enterprises Inc. has its headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. The company began using the name MGE: Management Experts in the early 2000s.

Scientologist Reuven Marcus founded MGE. According to the MGE website, Winteregg attended MGE as a client and then joined the firm as a partner in 1994. MGE targets dentists and uses L. Ron Hubbard’s business management tech. MGE’s stated goal is to teach dentists how to significantly increase their practice revenue.

A former MGE client told us that MGE makes it clear to new clients that one of its purposes is to make them into Scientologists. To this point, MGE insists that its client dentists create an “Org Board” at their dental offices. (Hubbard claimed that he had discovered the org board, a way of organizing a business, after taking it from a space civilization that was trillions of years old.) The client dentists also create “hat write ups” which are job descriptions for each of their employees. Employees are then assigned weekly stats designed to increase practice revenue. MGE also expects its client dentists to send in their staff members for training at MGE’s facilities in Pinellas Park, Florida.

MGE focuses on selling and closing dental patients to buy treatment packages. So instead of drilling and filling a cavity, an MGE-trained dentist has an initial consultation (sales cycle) during which they work to close the patient to sign a contract to purchase a comprehensive dental treatment program. This technique involves L. Ron Hubbard’s hard-sell techniques. Greg Winteregg made a video in which he used a Scientology-style “find their ruin” sales technique:

Winteregg: So first of all we have to establish with the patient during the consultation do they want to keep their teeth. That’s the foundation for everything because if they have no interest in keeping their teeth or you know you’re doing implants or whatever the procedure have to you have to cover do they have any value in what it is you’re trying to do because if there’s no value in the end product then it’s just going to boil down to just how cheap can they get it and that’s where it starts to get uncomfortable and sometimes upsetting for everyone so let’s establish they do want to keep their teeth and your treatment plan is going to help them keep their teeth and then lay out for them what the fee is going to be….

Winteregg used what is call a “closed question” in sales. A closed question forces a prospect into a yes or no answer. It is a set up. Greg Winteregg and MGE teach dentists to use a hard sell technique and zero in on a person’s dental anxiety by asking, “Do you want to keep your teeth?”

The only answer anyone will give is, “Yes, of course I want to keep my teeth!” This technique is designed to shift the power balance to the MGE-trained dentist who then tells the patient why an expensive dental treatment program is what it will take to keep their choppers. Here is the MGE video of Winteregg discussing this particular hard-sell technique. Fast forward to :53 to hear the hard sell:

The MGE Contract, meanwhile, is typical Scientology:

— Jeffrey Augustine