From my experience, a heat lamp placed near the thermostat will defeat a locked thermostat cage and temperature can be controlled by moving the heat lamp...
Older units with the mercury switch could also be tilted a bit to achieve the desired effect.
I saw someone attach a running blow drier on a coke machine with a temperature sensor that based the price on the temperature.
You could rig something similar to keep a thermostat sensor artificially high, so they think your AC isn’t on.