Robbers Take $260,000 in Jewelry From Store at Mall : Crime: It is the second such incident in a year at Best Products Co. in Thousand Oaks. Three intruders escape; one brandishes a handgun.

Three men robbed the Best Products Co. in Thousand Oaks on Wednesday, forcing customers and employees at gunpoint to lie on the floor while scooping up an estimated $260,000 in jewelry, authorities said.

It was the second armed robbery reported at the store in the Janss Mall in a year, and the fourth in which robbers have held up a Thousand Oaks jewelry store during business hours, a Ventura County sheriff’s investigator said.

Wednesday, the robbers entered the store shortly after 10 a.m. and one of them, brandishing a large handgun, ordered customers and clerks to lie down, Sheriff’s Detective Ed Wyand said.

An employee who asked not to be identified said more than 20 customers and clerks complied without hesitation.

Two of the robbers vaulted the jewelry counter and began taking items from display cases and stuffing them into white bags, Wyand said.

“They went right to the good stuff,” the employee said.

The trio ran from the store and were seen driving away in a white four-door sedan, Wyand said.

Sheriff’s Detective Mike Powers said the style of Wednesday’s robbery is consistent with three others reported in Thousand Oaks in the last year.

Last June, robbers held up the Bailey, Banks & Biddle store on West Hillcrest Drive; and two months later a team of robbers held up the nearby Kirk Jewelers. In each case, the suspects escaped with less than $50,000 worth of merchandise, Powers said.

An arrest warrant has been issued for James Ezekial Gamboa of Los Angeles in connection with the robbery of Bailey, Banks & Biddle, Powers said.

A trio of robbers also held up the same Best Products Co. in Thousand Oaks last April and took more than $100,000 in jewelry, he said.

But witnesses’ accounts have led investigators to believe that different robbers were involved in Wednesday’s holdup, Powers said. He added, however, that there is a good possibility that the robbers have been pooling information.

Powers said the jewelry stores can do little to prevent the robberies, short of posting armed guards during business hours.

“These people are very bold and brazen, and unfortunately our jewelry stores are out there,” Powers said.

And, the detective said, jewelry stores in Ventura County have been held up less frequently than stores in the San Francisco area and Los Angeles and Orange counties.