LOS ANGELES – The mother of Michael Jackson’s accuser begged the public for donations to pay for the boy’s cancer treatments, but the family actually was fully covered by topnotch health insurance, a news report says.

In November 2000, the mom took in at least $965 after making a fund-raising appeal in a community newspaper, claiming the family had no way to pay for the boy’s pricey medical care,

“Celebrity Justice” reported yesterday.

But the boy’s medical needs were covered by his father’s health insurance policy through the Teamsters Union, Paul Kenny, the union’s L.A. head, told the television program. The father works at a supermarket warehouse in El Monte, Calif.

“They were covered 100%. There was no cost to him out of pocket at all,” Kenny said.

The editor of the Mid Valley News in El Monte, which ran the mom’s heart-breaking appeal on its front page, is angry at the revelation.

“My readers were used. My staff was used. It’s sickening,” Connie Keenan told the program.

“My gut level, she’s a shark. She was after money,” Keenan said.

The newspaper fund-raising appeal is just the latest in an alleged string of shady financial dealings Jackson’s defense team has uncovered as they probe the mom’s past – all in a bid to discredit her testimony at the singer’s upcoming molestation trial.

“They are combing every bank account, every credit card, tracing money in and out of her accounts to see what she got, where she got it and how she spent it,” a Jackson source told the Daily News.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting the woman’s then-13-year-old son and conspiring to hold him and his family hostage at Neverland Ranch in early 2003. The singer pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Jackson’s defense team recently told Fritz Coleman, a popular L.A. TV weatherman, that he may be called to testify about his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the boy and his family in 2000.

“I was trusting that the money would go to what it was supposed to go to,” Coleman told The News yesterday.

Coleman, who met the boy at a summer comedy camp for underprivileged kids, said he does not know how much money was raised in three fund-raisers held at the Laugh Factory comedy club, or how it was spent.

The club’s owner, Jamie Masada, has said the undisclosed sum of money went to the “hospital” and for the mother’s “apartment.”

Jury selection in Jackson’s trial is slated to begin Jan. 31.