In this paper, a dual Riccati-type pseudo-potential formulation is introduced for a modified AKNS system (MAKNS) and infinite towers of novel anomalous conservation laws are uncovered. In addition, infinite towers of exact nonlocal conservation laws are uncovered in a linear formulation of the system. It is shown that certain modifications of the nonlinear Schrödinger model (MNLS) can be obtained through a reduction process starting from the MAKNS model. So, the novel infinite sets of quasi-conservation laws and related anomalous charges are constructed by an unified and rigorous approach based on the Riccati-type pseudo-potential method, for the standard NLS and modified MNLS cases, respectively. The nonlocal properties, the complete list of towers of infinite number of anomalous charges and the (nonlocal) exact conservation laws of the quasi-integrable systems, such as the deformed Bullough-Dodd, Toda, KdV and SUSY sine-Gordon systems, can be studied in the framework presented in this paper. Our results may find many applications since the AKNS-type system arises in several branches of nonlinear physics such as Bose-Einstein condensation, superconductivity and soliton turbulence.