Cash payments are special

> Return of actual stolen property. This is impossible for coins (since any suitable identifying marks would make it not a coin), but is possible, if improbable, for bank notes; if the victim of theft can show that they scrupulously and accurately record the serial numbers of all bank notes of that value that they receive and lose (both spent and stolen), and you have a stolen note in your possession, then this is enough to establish that you must either return the stolen bank note or something of equal value.

Nope. That was the whole point of the Miller vs Race 1758 case. At the time cash notes were a sort of "bearer cheques" and so easily identifiable: they had a bank name and a person's signature on it. The judge ruled that, even though the bank note was easily identifiable, it had currency and as far as the law was concerned not identifiable (no earmark).

It has no Wikipedia article, but the equivalent case in Scotland is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawfurd_v_The_Royal_Bank

> In a unanimous decision, the judges decided "that money is not subject to any vitium reale; and that it cannot be vindicated from the bona fide possessor, however clear the proof [of] the theft may be";