Deep Space Nine already did a story that kind of feels like this when Nog needs to "borrow" Sisko's desk for awhile to get machine parts for tech stuff. Jason
^yes, I was thinking of that story too. I think what happens there (Nog getting away with it) would actually not happen in TNG. Geordi would be found out, after which Picard has a small lecture about how it always is better to come up front about what happened and accept the consequences ('A Starfleet officer's first duty is to the truth').
But if it was Wesley instead of Geordi, Wesley would somehow manage to save the ship, another ship, some children and a planet.
Can't believe no one remembers this. The Stargazer was flung back in time hundreds of years not long after Picard took command and they discovered a highly-advanced civilization on a planet orbiting a red sun. The crew discovered that the planet's civilization, comprised of aliens indistinguishable from humans, was experiencing an extreme period of xenophobia and that it had dismantled its space program. Picard and a few officers beamed down in native clothing and were able to gather information on the planet and its people. In Picard's first key struggle with upholding the Prime Directive, he was forced to allow the planet's geological instability to continue so that it would explode as it did in the future. The species used crystals for a multitude of tasks, including data storage. Picard kept one he found and scanned to obtain information on the planet's culture. After the Stargazer's engineers completed a thorough scan of the crystal and decided it was simply a data storage crystal, Picard decided to keep it.