<p>We study the convergence and error estimates of a finite volume method for the compressible Navier–Stokes–Fourier system with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Physical fluid domain is typically smooth and needs to be approximated by a polygonal computational domain. This leads to domain-related discretization errors, the so-called variational crimes. To treat them efficiently we embed the fluid domain into a large enough cubed domain, and propose a finite volume scheme for the corresponding domain-penalized problem. Under the assumption that the numerical density and temperature are uniformly bounded, we derive the ballistic energy inequality, yielding a priori estimates and the consistency of the penalization finite volume approximations. Further, we show that the numerical solutions converge weakly to a generalized, the so-called dissipative measure-valued, solution of the corresponding Dirichlet problem. If a strong solution exists, we prove that our numerical approximations converge strongly with the rate 1/4. For periodic boundary conditions we obtain the optimal rate 1/2.</p>