They want you to take a plea bargain. No, scratch that. They need you to take a plea bargain. The court system would grind to a halt if everyone refused to d

They want you to take a plea bargain. No, scratch that. They need you to take a plea bargain. The court system would grind to a halt if everyone refused to deal and demanded a jury trial. So they charge you with as much as they can get away with. You can end up with dozens of counts as the result of one act. The purpose is to give themselves a strong hand when it comes to the deal. The prosecutor has already pretty much decided what he (or she) thinks is fair. So you take the deal and get what the prosecutor decided, or you run the risk of what is essentially a life sentence if you get convicted on every count. Probably wouldn't actually happen if you went to trial. Probably. But it might. So you take the deal and the government doesn't go through the expense of giving you a fair trial.