2 Men Steal Cash, Jewelry From Builder : Crime: James M. Peters and two family members are assaulted at home by armed robbers.

Armed men bound and robbed one of Orange County’s biggest home builders and two family members within a guarded, luxury community the developer built a decade ago, police said Monday.

No one was hurt in the attack, police said. The two men fled with an undisclosed amount of cash and jewelry from the Belcourt Drive North home of James M. Peters, who made his mark in the 1980s building upscale homes around the Southland.

Investigators in Newport Beach are now trying to determine whether the Friday night break-in at the Peters home is connected to the increasing numbers of “home invasions, most of them in the northern end of the county, that have been happening around the county over the past several years.

Said Peters, who was back at work Monday in his Newport Beach offices: “The police are conducting an investigation, and it’s just appropriate that we not comment on this. I don’t want to say anything.”

News of the break-in startled some of Peters’ neighbors in the Belcourt community, a gated collection of custom-built Cape Cod-style homes that Peters started building in 1980.

“In a gated community, you think security is there, but if people really want to get in--if they have malicious intent--I’m sure they can,” said a neighbor who asked not to be identified.

Sgt. Andy Gonis, a spokesman for the Newport Beach Police Department, said, “We’re not sure how they got in.” The intruders, who were wearing dark clothes and what police described as “face coverings,” may have scaled the eight-foot walls that surround the community, but that has not been determined, he said. Police would not say how the men were armed.

Officials at Elite Patrol and Guard Service, the Tustin-based firm that posts guards at the community’s two entrance gates, declined to comment on the case.

Police would like to know whether the men knew whom they were robbing.

“There’s no indication either way at this point. That’s, of course, one thing we’ll be looking into,” Gonis said.

What is known is that the two broke into the Peters house about 10 p.m. Friday while James, 56, his wife Beverly, 48, and her 22-year-old son, Sean Hornbeak, were all at home, Gonis said. He would not say how the robbers were able to enter the house.

The men demanded that the family members give them cash and jewelry. The robbers then tied them up and left, Gonis said. The incident lasted about 45 minutes.

The family members were found around midnight by a security guard after an alarm was activated, Gonis said.

Gonis said the items taken have not yet been determined, but he did say that some fine jewelry and thousands of dollars in cash were stolen.

Newport Beach has had only a few such home invasions. However, a succession of several break-ins five months ago prompted police there to warn residents in the upscale Dover Shores neighborhood to be on the lookout for a band of armed thieves.

The perpetrators of the Dover Shores thefts had waited in the daytime for residents to arrive home, then struck.

That did not happen in Friday’s incident, Gonis said, “but detectives are not going to overlook anything . . . . We’re looking at all possibilities, and we’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

Asian gang members have been implicated in many of the home invasions reported in recent months and years in Orange County. However, the intruders in the Friday incident are Caucasians who are probably in their 20s, authorities said. Police are asking anyone with information to call (714) 644-3717.